President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive actions on immigration in the hours after taking office was the leading edge of an effort to roll back four years of policies put in place by the Joe Biden administration and reimpose an agenda that would fundamentally upend the US’s global role as a sanctuary for refugees and immigrants.
In a series of orders he signed on Monday evening, Trump moved to seal the nation’s borders against migrants and systematically crack down on undocumented immigrants already in the US, part of a policy barrage that included a national emergency declaration to deploy the military to the border and a bid to cut off birthright citizenship for the children of non-citizens.
While some of the orders were likely to face steep legal challenges and might be difficult or impossible to enforce, the directives sent an unmistakable message that Trump was serious about fulfilling his frequent campaign promises of clamping down on the border, and escalating an anti-immigration agenda that he has made the centrepiece of his political identity.
“With these actions we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Trump said from the Capitol Rotunda after taking his oath of office. “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 from which they came.”
Just minutes after Trump took the oath, his administration shut down a government programme created by his predecessor that allowed migrants to secure appointments for admission into the US through legal ports of entry through an app. Switching off the programme, known as CBP One, plunged about 30,000 migrants who had existing appointments to enter the US into limbo, and indicated that it would now be far more difficult.
Hours later in the Oval Office, Trump moved to block asylum seekers and seal the border against those looking for protection in the US.
The Trump administration argued the illegal border crossings posed a national security and public health concern.
Rather than citing a specific threat of disease, Trump simply said that migrants did not provide border authorities with “comprehensive health information”, posing a public health risk.
He declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border to allow him to circumvent Congress and unlock federal funding for border wall construction and other enforcement efforts. Trump appeared to go further than simply having the military support border authorities with construction.
Trump also signed an order that gave the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement and directed the defence department to come up with a plan “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion”.
The directive would likely clash with an 1870s law called the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally limits the use of regular federal troops for domestic policing purposes.
“That is really dangerous and wrong-headed,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, who added that the order directed the military to treat the border not as a law enforcement matter but as a military campaign.
Trump took the steps even as the current state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply after the Biden administration took major steps to limit migration. Still, the executive actions, many of which Trump had previewed in recent years, are an attempt to make good on a promise to curtail immigration and enact mass deportations.
In another order, Trump said his government would no longer treat all US-born children as citizens, signalling his intention to essentially ignore the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The order directed federal agencies, starting in 30 days, not to issue citizenship documents to US-born children of an undocumented mother, or a mother on a temporary visa, if the father is not a US citizen or permanent resident. The move will amount to an extraordinary change of the 157-year-old 14th Amendment, and within hours it prompted a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Trump cannot abolish birthright citizenship on his own. Any change to the Constitution requires supermajority votes in Congress, and then ratification by three-quarters of the states. But denying certain immigrants’ children citizenship documents would effectively mean that they could be barred from using public services, which could have the same effect as abolishing the right.
“What the Trump administration is readying goes well beyond immigration policy,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, a pro-immigration think tank. “The push to gut 150 years of settled law and hard-won progress by attacking birthright citizenship, for example, seeks to reshape America’s future by moving this nation backwards.”
In front of supporters at Capital One Arena on Monday, Trump signed an order that rescinded an array of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr’s immigration policies, including one that established a task force to reunite families separated by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy. Another restored Trump’s efforts to withhold federal funds from local agencies that refuse to cooperate with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.
Trump is likely to issue more orders on immigration in the coming days, but there were already signs of substantial changes to the system in the immediate hours after his inauguration.
At the El Chaparral border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, dozens of migrants stared at their phone screens trying to check whether their appointments were still valid and instead found a crushing message: “existing appointments have been cancelled”.
“I am in shock,” said Maura Hernandez, who had arrived with her four small children and had an appointment scheduled for Tuesday.
“I don’t know what is going to happen to us,” she said, adding that they had fled their home amid rampant insecurity. That was just one aspect of Trump’s Day 1 moves.
In one executive order, Trump also raised the prospect of imposing travel bans, similar to his first term. He directed his administration to take 60 days to identify countries where thoroughly vetting visitors and visa applicants is not feasible and poses a potential risk to national security. In those instances, the administration should consider whether there should be a full or partial ban on admitting people from those countries into the US.
Trump also suspended refugee resettlement and enhanced the vetting of those seeking to come to the US from overseas.
He signed an executive order to end “catch and release”, which refers to the practice of releasing migrants into the US to await a court appearance after they cross the border. The details of that order, like many of Trump’s actions, remain unclear.
Trump also designated drug cartels as terrorist organisations.
The Biden administration had moved in June to bar asylum for migrants crossing into the country illegally.
The order remained in place and border numbers dropped precipitously in recent months. Border agents used the order to quickly turn back migrants apprehended after crossing without authorisation.
New York Times News Service