On his third day in office, President Donald Trump signed more executive orders aimed at closing the US southern border to immigration and increasing deportations, although large-scale deportation raids had yet to materialize as of Wednesday. the afternoon.
According to a fact sheet released by the White House, Trump signed an executive order that “suspends the physical entry of aliens involved in an invasion of the United States across the southern border.”
The order directs the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State to “take all necessary measures to immediately repel, repatriate and remove illegal aliens across the southern border of the United States.”
But the details of how Trump will block migrants trying to cross are still unclear.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News that Trump is “using the full resources of his executive branch to secure our nation’s borders.”
Adding that “the ports of entry are the places where you process and apply for entry into this country,” he indicated that Trump would allow the ports of entry to remain open to asylum seekers.
However, the CBP One app, which migrants previously used to submit their information and schedule appointments at ports of entry on the southwest border, stopped working for that purpose in the immediate hours after Trump took office. Existing appointments scheduled through the app were canceled, according to a statement posted Monday on the Customs and Border Protection website.
Late Tuesday, the Trump administration published a notice in the federal register to expand “expedited removal,” which allows ICE to deport immigrants without due process, to any undocumented immigrant who has crossed the border within two years. . The federal register records regulatory changes made by the federal government.
Previously, the Biden administration applied expedited removal to new arrivals who did not qualify for asylum when they crossed the southern border. Now, the Trump administration will be able to deport any migrant who has been in the United States for less than two years, regardless of where they are in the country, and without giving them a day in immigration court to file their claim.
The new order could accelerate Trump’s ability to deport immigrants by bypassing immigration courts, which currently have a backlog of 3 million cases.
The Trump administration on Monday night fired four top officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees U.S. immigration courts. The four fired officials had decades of experience running the country’s overburdened immigration courts. The Justice Department employs more than 700 immigration judges, who decide whether immigrants seeking asylum in the United States can remain in the country legally.
As of Wednesday afternoon, deportations did not appear to have increased dramatically. Border czar Tom Homan said on Fox News Wednesday morning that ICE agents arrested 308 immigrants in the past 24 hours. In September, the last month for which ICE data is available, the agency arrested 282 immigrants on average per day.
A source familiar with the recent arrests said they were part of “routine operations” across the United States.
While the arrests targeted immigrants with criminal records, the source could not confirm whether immigrants without criminal records would be arrested as “collateral arrests” because they were found in the same area.
