WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump rolled out a blueprint to beef up security at the southern border in a series of executive orders that began taking effect soon after his inauguration Monday, making good on his defining political promise to crack down on immigration and marking another wild swing in White House policy on the divisive issue.
Some of the orders revive priorities from his first administration that his predecessor had rolled back, including forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico and finishing the border wall. Others launched sweeping new strategies, like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America and ending use of a Biden-era app used by nearly a million migrants to enter America.
Actual execution of such a far-reaching immigration agenda is certain to face legal and logistical challenges.
But in a concrete sign of how the changes quickly played out, migrants who had appointments to enter the U.S. using the CBP One app saw them canceled minutes after Trump was sworn in, and Mexico agreed to allow people seeking U.S. asylum to remain south of the American border while awaiting their court cases.
“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech to thunderous applause.
The CBP One app disappears
The online lottery system gave appointments to 1,450 people a day at eight border crossings to enter on “parole,” which Joe Biden used more than any president.
It was a critical piece of the Biden administration’s border strategy to create new immigration pathways while cracking down on people who enter illegally.
Supporters say it brought order to a chaotic border. Critics say it was magnet for more people to come.
By midday Monday, it was gone.
Migrants who had scored coveted appointments weeks ago found them canceled.
That includes Melanie Mendoza, 21, and her boyfriend. She said they left Venezuela over a year ago, spending more than $4,000 and traveling for a month, including walking for three days.
“We don’t know what we are going to do,” she said in Tijuana, Mexico, just on the other side of the border from San Diego.
Mexico agrees to take back migrants
The Trump administration is reinstating its “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced 70,000 asylum-seekers in his first term to wait there for hearings in U.S. immigration court.
Mexico, a country integral to any American effort to limit illegal immigration, indicated Monday that it is prepared to receive asylum-seekers while emphasizing that there should be an online application allowing them to schedule appointments at the U.S. border.
Immigration advocates say the policy put migrants at extreme risk.
“This is déjà vu of the darkest kind,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge. She said policies like “Remain in Mexico” have exacerbated conditions at the border while doing little to address reasons migrants leave home in the first place.
Aiming to end the constitutional right to birthright citizenship
Anyone born in the United States automatically becomes a citizen, including children born to someone in the country illegally or in the U.S. on a tourist or student visa. It’s a right enshrined in the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 after the Civil War to assure citizenship for all, including Black people.
Trump’s executive order suggests that the amendment has been wrongly interpreted, and it would go into effect in 30 days — meaning it would not be retroactive.
The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups immediately sued, calling it “a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values.” Trump said he thought he had “very good grounds” for the order.
Migrants fear promised mass deportations
Trump is moving to realize his pledge of mass deportations of at least 11 million people in the country illegally.
One order restores efforts to pursue everyone in the country illegally, moving away from the Biden administration’s more narrow deportation criteria. He also wants negotiations with state and local governments to deputize police to enforce immigration laws.
As in his first term, Trump also wants to end federal grants to “sanctuary” jurisdictions — states and cities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities.
Rocio, a 43-year-old single mother from Mexico who lives in South Florida, said she’s worried about her 13-year-old son. His father was deported when the boy was an infant, and he’s afraid the same thing could now happen to her.
Rocio, who asked to be identified only by her first name over fears about being detained, said she worries about driving without a license but needs to work to survive.
“We have to be very careful,” she said.
Erlinda, a single mother from El Salvador who arrived in 2013, has signed over legal rights to her U.S.-born children, ages 10 and 8, to Nora Sandigo, who has volunteered to be the guardian for more than 2,000 children in 15 years, including at least 30 since December.
“I am afraid for my children, that they will live the terror of not seeing their mother for a day, for a month, for a year,” said Erlinda, 45, who asked to be identified by first name only due to fears of being detained.
A bigger military role in border security
Trump ordered the government, with Defense Department assistance, to “finish” construction of the border wall and send troops to the border. He did not say how many would go — leaving it up to the defense secretary — or what their exact role would be.
His executive orders suggested the military would help the Department of Homeland Security with “detention space, transportation (including aircraft), and other logistics services.” Trump directed the defense secretary to come up with a plan to “seal the borders” and repel “unlawful mass migration.”
Both Trump and Biden have sent troops to the border before.
Historically, they have been used to back up Border Patrol agents, who are responsible for securing the nearly 2,000-mile border, and not in ways that put them in direct contact with migrants.
Critics say using troops this way signals that migrants are a threat.
Cartels as foreign terrorist organizations
A Trump order paves the way for criminal organizations such as Tren de Aragua or MS-13 to be named “foreign terrorist organizations.” MS-13 is a transnational gang that originated in Los Angeles and gained a grip on much of Central America. Tren de Aragua is a Venezuelan street gang that has become a menace on American soil.
“The Cartels functionally control, through a campaign of assassination, terror, rape, and brute force nearly all illegal traffic across the southern border of the United States,” the order reads.
Trump is also raising the possibility of invoking a wartime power act for the first time since World War II to deport gang members who are deemed members of a foreign terrorist organization.
Pausing permission for refugees
Trump also is indefinitely suspending refugee resettlement. For decades, the program has allowed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution worldwide to come to the United States.
Trump also suspended the refugee program in his first term, and after reinstating it, slashed the numbers of refugees admitted. Under Biden, the program was rebuilt to a three-decade high.
The refugee program is the type of legal immigration that the Trump administration says it’s for, said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, one of 10 resettlement agencies helping refugees start new lives in the U.S.
The first Trump administration said it needed more vetting. This time, it says immigration is straining American communities, Hetfield said.
“This is a complaint that I have heard nobody raise,” he said. “It’s going to be devastating for people who followed the rules and are waiting to get out of danger.”
What else is Trump planning?
The incoming administration also ordered an end to releasing migrants in the U.S. while they await immigration court hearings, a practice known as “catch-and-release,” but officials didn’t say how they would pay for the enormous costs associated with detention.
Trump plans to “end asylum,” presumably going beyond what Biden has done to severely restrict it. It is unclear what the incoming administration will do with people from countries that don’t take back their citizens, such as Nicaragua and Venezuela.
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Salomon reported from Miami and Spagat from San Diego. AP writer Julie Watson in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed to this report.
