A busy week for President Trump on immigration, but where will it leave NY?

President Donald Trump has been a whirlwind of activity in the first days of his second term, issuing a host of orders and directives on immigration.

Some steps have been dramatic, like declaring an end to birthright citizenship. But is there any indication the actions will bring about the mass deportation promised by Trump in New York or across the country?

Earlier this week, "Morning Edition" host Janae Pierre discussed the events with Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute office at New York University Law School.

A transcript of their conversation is below. It has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Janae Pierre: Thanks for joining us. From what you've seen so far, is the president on the path to mass deportation or is this mainly show?

Muzaffar Chishti: I think what we are about to see is a lot of shock and awe. The president promised mass deportation, but there are large numbers of constraints from that happening.

I think we will probably not have a tsunami, but we'll certainly have a storm. We just don't know the intensity of the storm or where it will occur. But we also know that there are a lot of impediments to that becoming a much bigger event than he would like and a lot of people are prepared to deal with the storm.

What changes stand out to you as difference making or significant?

The most important difference from Trump I to Trump II is their decision to want to rid birthright citizenship in the country. Our constitution's 14th Amendment says that everyone born in the United States is a U.S. citizen. It came out of the Civil War, when African Americans were not considered U.S. citizens at birth.

And the Supreme Court has held over the years that that means exactly that, except to a few exceptions of children who are born to U.S. diplomats. So Trump wants to change that, but most scholars believe that you need a constitutional amendment to do that.

You can't do that by executive fiat, and you can't probably even do it by an act of Congress.

[Note: A federal judge on on Thursday put a temporary hold on Trump’s order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”]

Trump's Justice Department has directed U. S. attorneys to investigate and prosecute state and local law officials who refuse to enforce the immigration laws. Does Washington have the power to target local officials in such a manner?

Not really. Our constitution establishes the system of dual sovereignty between federal and the state and local governments. There clearly is a lot of authority given to federal government on immigration.But there is also a constitutional constraint on the federal government's ability to influence the actions of state and local governments.

This is what lawyers like to call the anti-commandeering doctrine, which is rooted in the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, that federal government cannot coerce local officials to do something or not to do something. There are three Supreme Court decisions on this in 1992, 1997, 2018, which established that principle.

The first of those cases actually came out of New York, where the Supreme Court has said that you cannot force local or state officials to do something. So that's the principle under which we live.

Let's look at New York City. We know that the city has robust sanctuary policies barring local cooperation with immigration enforcement officers.

Can the federal government compel local cooperation by withholding federal aid?

They cannot force state officials or city officials to do anything. In the first Trump administration, the way they tried to do something similar was saying, 'Well, if you don't cooperate, we won't give you certain funds.'

It was challenged in the courts and most courts said that you cannot withhold funding for those kinds of actions or inactions of the government. There was some split at the U.S. Court of Appeals, but the majority of the opinions was that such holding of funds is not permissible.

If these changes stand up in court or not, is it fair to say the president's actions will further stem the flow of immigrants to this country or, you know, are there other perhaps unintended consequences to that?

Well, you know, the audience for these actions of the president are, first, his base. He promised something and he says, 'Promises made, promises kept.' Whether they will actually have an outcome, that in many ways is always less important to him. Announcing these things is more important.

The second audience are people who may consider coming to the U.S. border, and he is trying to dissuade them from coming.

And the third is to have a chilling effect on unauthorized people who are already in the United States, that 'you better look over your shoulder.' It’s exactly the statement of his border czar – that we are, everyone is a target. So that instills a lot of fear, and that may be part of the goal here, that it's not whether we deport a large number of people, but whether we instill fear among the vast swaths of our population.

Before I let you go, what will you be looking for next?

I'll be looking for next, I think, is where the first big enforcement action happens, whether that's at the work site or whether that's in the jail, because that's sort of going to test where the rubber meets the road. That's going to decide what constitutional or statutory provisions are being violated and what's the ability to resist them.

I think I will also be very quickly looking at what the courts do. States have challenged his announcement on birthright citizenship. We'll quickly see how the courts react to that because otherwise that executive order goes into effect on Feb. 19.