Donald Trump on Monday began issuing a barrage of executive orders aimed at making good on his central campaign promise to crack down on immigration and unauthorized crossings at the US-Mexico border.
In his first appearance from the White House’s Oval Office after being inaugurated as the 47th president, Trump signed an order declaring a “national emergency” paving the way to send US troops to the southern border.
“Because of the gravity and emergency of this present danger and imminent threat, it is necessary for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border,” the executive order said. This despite a sharp drop in the last six months in the numbers of people crossing the border without authorization, after the Biden administration’s crackdown on access.
He also attempted an audacious move to redefine who gets to become an American under the US constitution, as well as overhauling the refugee admission program.
“Birthright – that’s a big one,” Trump told reporters, as he signed an order that attempts to deny automatic citizenship to the US-born children of undocumented immigrants, a guarantee bestowed by the 14th amendment. The president cannot unilaterally change the constitution, and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have already vowed immediately to challenge such a directive in court.
The order, which applies prospectively to children born 30 days after the measure’s implementation, instructs federal agencies not to issue certain documents that would normally be provided to those born in the US, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Trump acknowledged a legal challenge was likely on that policy but said his team believed they were on “good ground” to end birthright citizenship.
Despite his hardline rhetoric, Trump insisted: “I’m fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people,” he said.
Trump also signed an order designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations. And he signed an order to resume construction of the tall barrier along the US-Mexico border that he spent heavily on during his first administration but which Biden largely halted.
“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 had said earlier in his inaugural address on Monday, moments after being sworn into office in Washington.
Speaking in the Capitol rotunda just feet from Joe Biden, Trump delivered a stinging rebuke of his predecessor’s border policy. His vow to declare a national emergency drew a standing ovation from his supporters but also from a few Democrats in attendance.
Before the inauguration ceremony, an incoming White House official previewed additional border-related actions the new president would prioritize on his first day, stating that Trump would aim to suspend refugee resettlement for “at least four months,” “end asylum,” and reinstate a first-term policy forcing people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed.
In the earlier press call, the official offered few details on how the administration planned to execute such a sprawling set of immigration actions that were all but certain to face legal and logistical challenges.
“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do. We will do it at a level that nobody has ever seen before,” Trump said during his inaugural address, to applause.
He also repeated a falsehood he made on the campaign trail: that “many” immigrants arriving in the US unlawfully were coming from foreign prisons and mental institutions. There is no evidence to suggest this is true. In a later speech at the Capitol One arena, Trump went further, falsely claiming that unauthorized immigrants are driving up US crime rates. Numerous studies have shown that immigrants do not commit crimes at a higher rate than native-born Americans, the opposite in fact.
During the rally, Trump signed an executive order revoking a slew of Biden-era immigration actions, including the establishment of an interagency taskforce dedicated to the reunification of families separated at the southern border under the zero-tolerance policy of the first Trump administration.
Across the country on Monday, immigrant communities were bracing for Trump’s promise to carry out the “largest deportation program in American history,” with a large-scale immigration raid expected as soon as Tuesday morning, possibly in Chicago and other cities.
Asked about the prospect of raids by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to deport people, Trump told reporters: “I don’t want to say when, but it’s going to happen. It’s got to.”
At the moment he took office, the new administration abruptly ended use of a mobile phone app created under Biden known as CBP One, which had allowed migrants to schedule appointments to enter the US at a port of entry along the border, some waiting there months to snap up one of the limited daily appointments.
“We were hoping that they would respect the appointments that were already scheduled, but clearly they haven’t done that. So it’s really concerning because all these people are going to be stranded in danger, and they’re going to be thinking what to do next. And that might come at the expense of probably being kidnapped in border cities, trying to cross through dangerous areas, and perhaps dying,” Jesús de la Torre, assistant director for Global Migration at the Hope Border Institute, a grassroots advocacy organization based in El Paso, Texas, told the Guardian on Monday afternoon.
“As of now, without CBP One, there is almost no access to asylum at the US-Mexico border,” he said.
Trump also announced during his speech that he would would reinstate his first administration’s so-called Remain in Mexico policy, which forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers journeying north to wait in further peril on the Mexican side of the border for their hearings in US immigration court. Biden canceled this policy and allowed people to wait in the US. Mexico, a critical partner to US efforts to curb illegal immigration at the southern border, on Monday indicated that it would cooperate.
Hardliners were duly appointed to key roles, with the border czar Tom Homan and the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller prominent among them.
Meanwhile, CBP One was a Biden effort to stem unlawful border crossings.
Thousands have waited on the Mexican side of the border until they got an appointment. Now those in the US fear deportation while those in Mexico trying CBP One daily have been thwarted.
The US Customs and Border Protection website on Monday afternoon saidthe application is “no longer available, and existing appointments have been cancelled”.
“Many had waited weeks or months for their opportunity to safely present at a US port of entry, [this] makes no sense,” Robyn Barnard, senior director, refugee advocacy at Washington-based Human Rights First, adding it would only “play into the hands of cartels and smugglers”.
Read more of the Guardian’s Trump coverage
