WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s promises to beef up security at the southern border with Mexico began taking effect soon after he was inaugurated 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 moves 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. But others will mark sweeping new strategies, like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America, pulling the military into border security 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, expected under several executive orders, is certain to face legal and logistical challenges. And few details have been released so far.
But in a concrete sign of how the changes were already playing 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 their court cases play out.
“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 will reinstate 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 in northern Mexico.
“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 an American 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 and assured citizenship for all, including Black people.
Trump’s effort is certain to face steep legal challenges. A White House official previewing the executive orders on the condition of anonymity provided no information on how he intends to carry it out.
Migrants fear promised mass deportations
The previewed orders were less specific about how Trump will fulfill his pledge of mass deportations of at least 11 million people already in the country illegally. One edict will equip immigration officers with “authorities needed” to enforce the law.
Trump and his aides have repeatedly said they would scrap Biden’s deportation priorities, which focused on people with criminal records or national security threats, to include all people without legal status.
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 Sanidgo, who has volunteered to be 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 will order the government, with Defense Department assistance, to “finish” construction of the border wall, though the White House official didn’t say how much territory that would cover.
The official did not say how many troops Trump was planning to send, noting that would be up to the secretary of defense, or what their role would be when they get there.
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 roles 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
The Trump administration also intends to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and specifically aims to crack down on the gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13 and remove their members from the U.S.
MS-13 is a transnational gang that originated in Los Angeles and has since gained a grip on much of Central America. Tren de Aragua was a street gang was born in Venezuela but has become a menace even on American soil. It exploded into the U.S. presidential campaign amid kidnappings, extortion and other crimes throughout the Western Hemisphere tied to a mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants.
Pausing permission for refugees
He also intends to suspend refugee resettlement for four months, the official said. For decades, the program has allowed hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war and persecution worldwide to come to the United States.
Trump similarly suspended the refugee program at the beginning of his first term, and after reinstating it, slashed the numbers of refugees admitted to the country. Under Biden, the program was rebuilt to the point that last year about 100,000 refugees were resettled in America — a three-decade high.
The refugee program is the type of legal immigration that the Trump administration says they’re for, said Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS, one of 10 resettlement agencies helping refugees start new lives.
When the first Trump administration suspended the program, it said it needed more vetting. This time, it says American communities are straining from immigration, 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 and be with their families.”
What else is Trump planning?
The incoming administration also will order 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 of nationalities whose countries 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.
Rebecca Santana, Gisela Salomon And Elliot Spagat, The Associated Press
