Immigration Reform news 2017: activists believe Trump's immigration reform policies may lead to widespread human rights violations

Things are going to change when U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. His proposal of building a wall, literally and figuratively, to keep immigrants out of the country has been met with mixed reactions, and immigrant rights activists are anxious about the possible human rights violations that will happen when millions of undocumented immigrants are deported or detained.

Reuters has reported that Trump has ordered his transition team to communicate with the Department of Homeland Security and look into the assets available for the construction of a border wall. They are also looking into the viability of expanding immigrant detention.

Furthermore, the transition team asked about the controversial aerial surveillance program that was scaled down by the Obama administration. The program was used to track down illegal immigrants and drug traffickers along the Mexican border, and immigrant hardliners want to revamp it.

Right now, Trump's transition team is still discussing the viability of these options with the Department of Homeland Security, but what's going to happen once they are implemented?

Staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) National Prison Project, Carl Takei, told International Business Times that the expanding immigrant detention is just not feasible, and it's a "human rights crisis waiting to happen."

"Unless President Obama reverses course in the coming weeks, he is laying the groundwork for a massive increase in detention," he stated.

While Trump and his transition team look for solutions, JPMorgan Funds' David Kelly told CNBC that the country actually needed more immigrants because the labor force was running out of qualified American workers.

"We need these workers. We're almost out of well-qualified native-born workers," he said. "One of the remarkable things about the labor market over the next 10 years is [that] around 85 percent of the new growth in the working-age population is going to have to come from immigrants, not from the native-born population," he added.

President-elect Trump will take the oath of office on Jan. 20, and he will most likely talk about his immigration reform policies afterward.