President Trump identified immigration as the issue that put him over the top in the 2024 election, and now he’s moving quickly to fulfill his promises — taking a slew of actions to recalibrate our immigration system.
While foes and friends have focused on his directives to end birthright citizenship and designate foreign drug cartels and criminal gangs as terrorist organizations, Trump’s other immigration initiatives will be much more impactful, at least in the short term.
Almost immediately after taking office, Trump shut down access to the CBP One app for inadmissible migrants seeking quick entry into the United States.
Biden transformed the app, created in Trump’s first term to expedite lawful travel, into a tool to promote illegal entry. Up to 43,500 illegal migrants per month used it to enter unlawfully through border ports.
Keep that in mind as advocates claim border fixes aren’t necessary because apprehensions are down: Those hundreds of thousands of CBP One migrants had no more right to enter than did other migrants who jumped the line.
Congress has revealed that nearly 96% of aliens who used the app were waved in without vetting, and in August, the DHS Inspector General found that 1,700 different app users claimed just seven US addresses as intended destinations.
Trump also issued a proclamation suspending illegal entries outside the ports of entry that will — once implemented — restrict illegal migrants’ ability to apply for asylum, in an effort to protect states from criminal aliens and preserve limited public resources.
This order is similar to one Trump issued in 2018, Presidential Proclamation 9822, which also suspended asylum for migrants who bypassed the ports and entered illegally.
PP 9822 was meant to give teeth to regulations issued by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security barring asylum grants to aliens who attempted to enter in violation of a proclamation — like PP 9822.
Those regulations were enjoined by the courts, but the Ninth Circuit didn’t issue its final order blocking them until after Trump left office, too late for him to seek Supreme Court review.
This time around, his administration is leaving time for legal challenges to percolate before often hostile judges — so the high court will ultimately have the final say.
A separate Trump executive order resumes construction of the federal “border wall system” — the fences, lights, cameras and fiber-optic cables that act as a force multiplier for Border Patrol agents operating in remote and often hostile areas.
When Biden halted work on the border wall system soon after taking office, he left agents literally “in the dark.” Trump has now responded, “Let there be light — and enforcement.”
Trump’s order also expands detention space for illegal border migrants and criminal aliens.
Biden ignored congressional mandates by refusing to detain criminal aliens, and states like Texas were unsuccessful in their legal efforts to force the administration to take those criminals into custody.
Illegal crossings will plummet and streets will be safer once Trump detains migrants and criminals — provided Congress backs up his words with the necessary cash for detention.
Illegal entries have dropped sharply since Monday, meaning fewer border detention spaces for new arrivals will be needed.
But as border czar Tom Homan continues ramping up interior arrests of criminal aliens, he’ll likely need at least twice as many detention beds as the roughly 40,000 now available.
That’s where another Trump order comes in: One that directs the Defense Department to expand its mission to include securing the border against drug smugglers and mass migration.
In the past, various presidential administrations, including Barack Obama‘s, have detained migrants on military bases.
Troops have also built infrastructure, performed surveillance and taken on other “ancillary” border duties.
Expect all such operations to ramp up in the coming weeks.
Agents need all the help they can get — and the Defense Department will provide it.
Trump has also vowed to “Make America Safe Again” by reinstating “Remain in Mexico,” a program started in his first term that sent illegal entrants back across the border to await their asylum hearings.
Remain in Mexico prevented migrants from gaming the asylum system by making bogus claims, allowing them to live and work in the United States for years while their applications were pending.
An October 2019 federal assessment deemed it “an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system.”
Biden, however, quickly suspended the program and then terminated it (twice), fighting all the way to the Supreme Court for the right not to send migrants back.
Four years of border chaos reveal how that worked out for the American people.
In less than 48 hours, the second Trump administration established a road map that will bring security and sense back to our immigration system.
And by all accounts, he’s just getting started.
Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
This post was originally published on here
