Trump will issue orders to remake immigration policies, but they will face challenges

On By Littum

WASHINGTON (AP) – A wide range of executive orders that President Donald Trump has promised to strengthen security on the southern border. Monday began taking effect shortly after he was inaugurated Monday, making good on his key policy promise to crack down on immigration.

The Trump administration on Monday halted the use of a border app called CBP One that has allowed nearly 1 million people to legally enter the United States with the right to work.

A notice on the Customs and Border Protection website Monday, just after Trump was sworn in, let users know that the app that had been used to allow migrants to schedule appointments at eight Southwest border ports of entry was no longer available. The announcement said existing deals have been cancelled.

Other orders will rely more on the US military and redefine who gets to be an American. But the actual execution of such a far-reaching immigration agenda is sure to face legal and logistical challenges.

“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will be immediately stopped and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Trump said to thunderous applause , when he spoke during his inauguration moments after being sworn into office.

The orders, also previewed Monday by an incoming White House official before Trump took office, aim to end asylum access, send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, suspend the refugee program, force people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico and terminate birthright citizenship. There were few details on specifically how these broad plans would be executed.

Many of the steps mirrored earlier ones during Trump’s first administration, which also faced lawsuits. Others — like the effort to end the constitutional right to automatic citizenship for anyone born in the United States — marked sweeping new strategies that are expected to provoke backlash in the courts.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details before the orders are signed, some of them shortly after he was inaugurated Monday.

Immigrant communities around the country have been preparing for an assault that the Republican president-elect had been promising throughout his campaign and again at a rally Sunday.

AP correspondent Ed Donahue reports on Inauguration Day’s impact on immigration.

The previewed orders were less specific about how Trump will fulfill his promise of mass deportations of at least 11 million people already in the country illegally. An edict would equip immigration officers with “necessary authorities” to enforce the law.

Trump and his aides have repeatedly said they would scrap President Joe Biden’s deportation priorities, which focused on people with criminal records and those who pose threats to national security, to include all people without legal status.

One key announcement was the effort to end birthright citizenship — one of Trump’s most sweeping immigration efforts to date.

Birthright citizenship means that anyone born in the United States automatically becomes an American citizen, a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 in the wake of the Civil War and guaranteed citizenship to everyone, including black people.

It applies to children born to someone in the country illegally or in the United States on a tourist or student visa who plans to return to their home country. Trump’s efforts to end that right are sure to face steep legal challenges, and the incoming White House official gave no information on how he intends to carry it out.

Trump also intends to suspend refugee resettlement for four months, the official said. It is one program that for decades has allowed hundreds of thousands of people from around the world fleeing war and persecution to come to the United States.

Trump similarly suspended the refugee program at the beginning of his first term, and then after reinstating it, cut the numbers of refugees admitted to the country each year.

The Trump administration also intends to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and specifically aims to crack down on the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and will remove these gang members from the country. The homegrown street gang was born in Venezuela but has become a threat even on American soil, exploding in the US presidential campaign amid a spate of kidnappings, extortion and other crimes across the Western Hemisphere linked to a mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants.

The incoming administration will also order an end to releasing migrants in the United States while they await immigration hearings, a practice known as “catch-and-release,” but officials did not say how they would pay for the huge costs associated with detention.

Trump plans to “end asylum,” presumably beyond what Biden has done to severely curtail it. It is unclear what the incoming administration will do with people of nationalities whose countries do not take back their citizens, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela.

And it would reinstate the first Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced about 70,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court. That measure would require cooperation from Mexico, and it’s unclear how that jibes with promises to end asylum altogether.

Mexico, a country integral to any U.S. effort to curb illegal immigration, weighed in Monday morning, indicating it was prepared to accept asylum seekers the U.S. is keeping waiting in Mexico, while stressing that there should be a form of online application that allows them to schedule appointments at the US border.

CBP One was used by the Biden administration to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country to pursue asylum claims. The Trump administration’s move on Monday ended use of the app. The move fulfills a promise Trump made during his campaign and will please critics who say it was an overly generous magnet for more people to come to Mexico’s border with the United States.

The CBP One app had been wildly popular. It is an online lottery system to give appointments to 1,450 people a day at eight border crossings. They go on immigration “parole,” a presidential authority that Joe Biden used more than any other president since it was introduced in 1952.

Trump will order the government, with assistance from the Defense Department, to “complete” the construction of the border wall, although the official did not say how much territory it would cover. Barriers currently span about 450 miles (720 kilometers), a little more than a third of the border. Many areas not covered are in Texas, including inhospitable terrain where migrants rarely cross.

Sending troops to the border is a strategy Trump has used before, as has Biden. In 2018, Trump deployed 800 active troops to assist Border Patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans. And in 2023, as the United States prepares to end pandemic restrictions on immigration, the Biden administration sent 1,500 active troops to the border between the United States and Mexico.

Both administrations also used National Guard troops along the border.

The official did not say how many troops Trump planned to send, saying that would be up to the defense secretary or what their role would be when they get there.

Historically, troops have been used to support Border Patrol agents, who are responsible for securing the nearly 1,000-mile border that separates the United States from Mexico, and not in roles that put them in direct contact with migrants.

Critics have said that sending troops to the border sends the signal that migrants are a threat.