US President Donald Trump launched his comprehensive crackdown on immigration policy on Monday. He assigned the military to help secure the border, enacted a sweeping ban on asylum and took steps to restrict citizenship for children born on American soil.
Trump declared illegal immigration a national emergency and directed the Pentagon to help build border walls, provide detention facilities and transport migrants, and he authorized the defense secretary to send troops to the border if necessary.
Trump called on his administration to restart its “Remain in Mexico” program, which forced non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for their U.S. cases to be resolved.
Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border authorities said they had ended outgoing President Joe Biden’s CBP One immigration program, which had allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling appointments through an app. Existing appointments were canceled, leaving migrants stunned and unsure what to do.
Daynna del Valle, a 40-year-old Venezuelan, spent eight months in Mexico waiting for an appointment that was supposed to take place on Tuesday. At the time, she was working in a nail salon but earning so little that she barely managed to send money back to her mother in Colombia, a cancer survivor who needed medical treatment for her blood pressure.
“I’m lost,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, where to go.”
Trump, a Republican, retook the White House after promising to strengthen border security and deport record numbers of migrants. He criticized Biden for high levels of illegal immigration during the Democrat’s presidency, even as Biden angered some members of his own party by tightening policies that sharply limited the right to seek asylum. Mexico also increased enforcement measures, and the number of migrants caught crossing the border illegally fell dramatically.
Trump’s influence helped defeat a bipartisan bill in Congress early last year that aimed to address some of the long-standing and newer problems facing the U.S. from the influx at the border. Once a magnet for individual Mexicans looking for work, in recent years entire families and increasing numbers of Central and South American asylum seekers have made sometimes dangerous journeys to enter the United States
The result is years of backlogs at the asylum court. But on Monday, the nascent Trump administration took steps to seize control of the U.S. Justice Department’s immigration courts, firing four senior immigration court officials, three sources familiar with the matter said.
In her first comments after Trump’s inauguration, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum noted that some of his initial announcements closely resembled actions he took in his previous term, as she also wanted to reassure Mexicans that she would vigorously defend their interests.
Responding to Trump’s initial moves to stop illegal migration, Sheinbaum said her administration would address the needs of migrants in a “humanitarian” manner, although she also pledged to return foreign migrants to their home countries.
“We were gone for 1 day”
Republicans say large-scale deportations are necessary after millions of immigrants crossed the border illegally during Biden’s presidency. According to a U.S. government estimate, about 11 million immigrants were in the U.S. illegally or on temporary status at the beginning of 2022, with some analysts now estimating the number at 13 to 14 million.
“As commander in chief, I have no greater responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I will do,” Trump said in his inaugural address.
Trump’s critics and immigration advocates say mass deportations could disrupt the economy, divide families and cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said in a federal court filing Monday that Trump’s decision to end the CBP One program eliminated the only route to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, an opening salvo from the civil rights group in the fight against Trump’s agenda in court.
One of US President Donald Trump’s first executive orders declared a national emergency at the border with Mexico, which resulted in the deployment of the military and the deportation of millions of undocumented migrants.
Honduran migrant Denia Mendez’s phone began buzzing with a message that the app she had used to book her appointment to apply for asylum in the United States, scheduled for Tuesday, was unavailable.
Mendez, a 32-year-old single mother, fled with her daughter Sofia and son Isai, both young teenagers, after a gang member began blackmailing them.
“We were just a day away,” Mendez said in disbelief as she discussed her options with other migrants, many of them Venezuelans.
Legal challenges initiated
In his order, which focused on the “birthright to citizenship,” Trump called on U.S. authorities to recognize the citizenship of children born in the U.S. without at least one U.S. citizen or parent permanently residing in the U.S refuse and apply the restrictions within 30 days.
The order prompted swift legal challenges on Tuesday. Twenty-two Democratic-led states, as well as the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, filed lawsuits in federal courts in Boston and Seattle, claiming Trump violated the U.S. Constitution.
Two similar lawsuits were filed by the ACLU, immigrant advocacy groups and an expectant mother hours after Trump signed the executive order, sparking his administration’s first major court battle.
If Trump’s order stands, it would deny the right to citizenship to more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States for the first time, said Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell.
“President Trump does not have the authority to take away constitutional rights,” she said in a statement.
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Canada offers no formal guarantee to children born in the country, although citizenship is granted in most cases, including a recent case involving the offspring of Russian spies that went all the way to the Supreme Court.
In other orders, Trump suspended refugee resettlement in the U.S. for at least three months and ordered a security review to determine whether a travel ban should be imposed on travelers from certain nations.
The Republican president has rolled back existing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement policies that prioritized serious criminals and expanded the scope of their enforcement, including targeting final deportation orders at migrants, a move that could help spur deportations.
Trump also initiated a process to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and to use a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act against foreign gang members.
