US President Donald Trump began his sweeping crackdown on immigration on Monday, tasking the military to help with border security, issuing a broad asylum ban and taking steps to limit citizenship for children born on American soil.
Declaring illegal immigration a national emergency, Trump ordered the Pentagon to provide support for border wall construction, detention facilities and the transportation of migrants, and authorized the defense secretary to send troops to the border if needed.
Trump called on his administration to reinstate its “remain in Mexico” program, which forced non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for their US cases to be resolved.
Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border officials said they had shut down outgoing President Joe Biden’s CBP One entry program, which allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by making appointments through an app. Existing appointments have been cancelled, leaving migrants caught off guard and unsure of what to do.
Daynna del Valle, a 40-year-old Venezuelan, spent eight months in Mexico waiting for her appointment, which was due to take place on Tuesday. At the time, she worked in a nail salon, but earned so little that she could barely send money to her mother in Colombia, a cancer survivor who needed blood pressure treatment.
“I’m lost,” she said. – I don’t know what to do, where to go.
Trump, a Republican, recaptured the White House after promising to beef up border security and deport a record number of migrants. He criticized Biden for the high level of illegal immigration during the Democratic presidency, even though Biden has angered some members of his own party by tightening policies that severely limited the right to apply for asylum. Mexico has also stepped up measures, and the number of migrants caught illegally crossing has fallen dramatically.
Trump’s influence helped kill bipartisan legislation in Congress early last year that sought to address some of the long-standing and newer issues facing the U.S. over the influx at the border. Once a magnet for individual Mexicans seeking work, in recent years entire families and a growing number of asylum seekers from Central and South America have made the sometimes perilous journeys to seek entry to the U.S.
The result is multi-year backlogs at the court for asylum seekers. But on Monday, the new Trump administration took steps to gain control of the US Justice Department’s immigration courts, firing four top 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 sought to reassure Mexicans that he would vigorously defend their interests.
In response to Trump’s initial moves to stem illegal migration, Sheinbaum said her government would attend to the migrants’ needs in a “humanitarian” way, though she also promised to repatriate foreign migrants.
‘We were 1 day apart’
Republicans say the large-scale deportations are necessary after millions of immigrants crossed the country illegally during Biden’s presidency. There were about 11 million immigrants in the US illegally or with temporary status at the start of 2022, according to US government estimates, a number some analysts now put at 13 to 14 million.
“As commander in chief, I have no greater responsibility than to defend our country against threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I will do,” Trump said in his inaugural address.
Trump’s critics and immigrant advocates say mass deportations could disrupt the economy, divide families and cost American 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 removed the only route to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, the civil rights group’s first salvo in the fight against the Trump agenda. in court.
One of US President Donald Trump’s first executive orders declared a national emergency on the border with Mexico, which will mean deploying the military and deporting millions of undocumented migrants.
Honduran migrant Denia Mendez’s phone started buzzing with the news that the app she used to book her asylum appointment in the US, scheduled for Tuesday, was down.
Mendez, a 32-year-old single mother, fled with her daughter Sofia and son Isai, both young teenagers, after a gang member began blackmailing her.
“We were a day away,” Mendez said in disbelief as she discussed her options with other migrants, many of them Venezuelan.
Initiated legal disputes
In his order targeting “citizenship at birth,” Trump called on US agencies to deny citizenship to children born in the US without at least one US citizen or permanent resident parent, applying the 30-day limits.
The order sparked swift legal challenges on Tuesday, with 22 Democratic-led states, along with the District of Columbia and the city of San Francisco, filing lawsuits in federal courts in Boston and Seattle claiming Trump violated the US Constitution.
There were two similar cases filed ACLU, immigrant organizations and pregnant women in the hours after Trump signed the executive order, kicking off his administration’s first major court battle.
If allowed to stand, Trump’s order would deny citizenship to more than 150,000 children born annually in the United States for the first time, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell’s office said.
“President Trump has no authority to take away constitutional rights,” she said in a statement.
During his second term, US President Donald Trump has vowed to crack down on illegal immigration, and his so-called border czar has targeted the city of Chicago. CBC’s Nick Purdon goes there and finds a community living in fear but committed to fighting back.
Canada offers no formal guarantee for children born in the country, although citizenship is granted in most cases, including a recent case involving Russian spies that reached the Supreme Court.
In other orders, Trump suspended the resettlement of American refugees for at least three months and ordered a review of security measures to see if travelers from certain countries should be subject to a travel ban.
The Republican president reversed existing guidelines for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials that prioritized serious criminals and expanded the scope of their enforcement, including targeting migrants with final deportation orders, a move that could help increase removals.
Trump also launched a process to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and to use a 1798 law known as the Alien Enemy Act against foreign gang members.
