Immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers hoping for a safe haven to build a life in the United States awoke to a blistering reality on Tuesday, after Donald Trump’s barrage of policy changes shortly after taking office effectively slammed the door shut on many would-be newcomers – and cast a spectre over many already living stateside.
First came the news that, as Trump was being sworn in as the 47th president, the federal government had disabled its CBP One phone app’s appointment system, where prospective migrants and asylum seekers could schedule an appointment with the US authorities and legally enter the country.
Not only was the pathway suddenly gone for the roughly 270,000 people trying to apply, but some 30,000 individuals had their existing appointments cancelled. Those affected, many of whom had waited months in dangerous conditions in Mexico in order to enter legally, sobbed as they were turned away at the border.
Then, on Monday evening, Trump signed a slew of executive orders and proclamations – including a national emergency declaration on the southern border – that tore into the US’s fabric as a nation of immigrants, instead casting foreigners as national security and public safety threats whose presence is detrimental to the country.
He immediately involved the military, ordering the armed forces to “seal” the US’s borders “by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration”. Under this new setup, soldiers will supposedly help homeland security officials reach “complete operational control of the southern border”, defined unrealistically under domestic law as zero unlawful entries. As of Tuesday it was hard to know how this would work in practice.
Defense resources will be used for detaining and transporting more people, including aircraft that could potentially carry out deportations. And, in this manufactured war zone, Trump did not seem to care about potential use of force to keep migrants out, as long as service members and border agents stayed safe.
At the same time, Trump imposed categorical restrictions on anyone “engaged in the invasion across the southern border”, including those who tried to invoke their right to seek asylum. Border authorities are to resume the Migrant Protection Protocols, a signature practice from his first term that is also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, where migrants and asylum seekers are returned to Mexico throughout their US immigration court proceedings and subjected to high risk of violence there.
Plus, of course, Trump will get more of his “wall”.
This new system at the border – replete with intense militarization and explicit violations of human rights – comes straight from the imagination of the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, which pushes the racist idea that non-white immigrants are “invading” predominantly white nations and “replacing” white culture.
Once a fringe, rightwing notion, the conspiracy theory’s “invasion” rhetoric has become more mainstream amid its use by prominent Republican figures, Trump included. Now, it is being explicitly used to justify a sweeping crackdown on both unauthorized and legal migration, with seemingly no exceptions for vulnerable people such as unaccompanied children or families with infants.
And Trump’s changes to US immigration policy don’t stop at the southern border.
So-called sanctuary jurisdictions that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities may no longer have access to federal funds because of their support for their local immigrant communities.
On the flip side, state and local law enforcement who want to get in on the immigration crackdown will be encouraged to join Trump’s mass deportation effort, a collaboration likely to chill immigrants’ willingness to report crimes.
Again and again, Trump used his orders to demand that immigrants be detained throughout their court proceedings, which can take years, raising questions about how he plans to avoid quickly overloading the current immigration detention infrastructure of about 41,000 beds. He also wants people to be criminally prosecuted if they entered the country unauthorized, and for the rare undocumented immigrant who commits a federal capital crime, the justice department is to seek the death penalty.
Meanwhile, on legal migration, Trump nixed a series of opportunities for some of the world’s most vulnerable to reach safety in the US. Most notably, at a time when around 120 million people are forcibly displaced globally, he suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program, where thoroughly vetted refugees – many of whom have been waiting in camps or other trying conditions for years – are resettled in the US.
By the end of Joe Biden’s presidency, the program was finally rebuilding from damage done during Trump’s first term, admitting around 100,000 refugees in fiscal year 2024.
But the US’s refugee infrastructure is delicate. Resettlement agencies that receive refugees rely on funding from the federal government, in part based on the number of people they welcome. So when refugees don’t arrive and the program struggles, their offices are forced to close.
By pausing admissions, Trump is doing more than delaying much-awaited peace for families who have survived persecution – he is derailing the resettlement program’s support system and its pipeline for the future.
Trump also ended Biden’s processes that let Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who had a financial sponsor live and work legally in the US for two years while they explored more permanent immigration options.
Likewise, officials have been ordered to identify places that, in the administration’s view, do not provide enough vetting information, so that Trump can suspend admission for nationals of those countries, too.
Overall, it was a cruel and racist grab-bag of announcements that hyperbolically mixed the aggressive and the very real – CBP One, MPP, with the unnecessary – a national emergency, and the outrageously fanciful – an executive order seeking to restrict the constitutional right to birthright citizenship, which has already been challenged in court.
On the first day of Trump 2.0, the commander-in-chief made his immigration agenda clear: keep people out, and if they’re here, make them pay. Already, the consequences of his actions for people’s lives have been severe, as their hopes for a brighter future have disappeared in a flash.
