Among the pile of executive orders the president signed on Inauguration Day were several aimed at tackling the border crisis and shutting down various avenues of immigration. He declared the southern border a national emergency, designated cartels as foreign terrorists, and re-established restrictive orders from his first term that former President Joe Biden had reversed or ended. And that’s not even the half of it. Trump has spun a whirlwind through the immigration system. Some orders are already being challenged, and additional resistance is certainly underway. Will it faze Trump or stop him from fulfilling his promise to overhaul immigration? Unlikely. This is just the beginning. The process will be long and have many critics, but will it make the nation better?
Sealing Our Borders
One of the first steps to closing off the southern border was the president declaring a national emergency, allowing him to redirect personnel and funds to help build a wall and thwart illegal crossings. Yes, the wall is back. It’s one of many directives in an executive order called “Securing Our Borders.” With this action, Trump also ended a practice known as “catch and release” and terminated the CBP One app, a mobile application used to facilitate entry into the US, though some evidence suggests the program was corrupt. “Congress has revealed that nearly 96% of aliens who used the app were waved in without vetting,” said Andrew Arthur in The New York Post. “[A]nd in August, the DHS Inspector General found that 1,700 different app users claimed just seven US addresses as intended destinations.”
Next, Trump nixed a Biden-era program that was used to parole migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. Its website has already gone dark. Nearly 530,000 people had received parole and entered the US from those four nations, according to the National Foundation for American Policy. Migrants were allowed a two-year stay with permission to work if they qualified for the program and had an American pledge to support them financially. Once here, they could apply for asylum and other benefits. The program, however, was an “unmitigated disaster,” said the House Judiciary Committee in a report last November.
The president also reinstated the Remain in Mexico policy from his first term, forcing migrants to stay in Mexico while waiting for asylum hearings instead of having the luxury of living and working in the US for years before seeing a judge. For this policy to work, though, Trump needs Mexico’s permission. How it will play out is still unknown.
Ending the ‘Invasion’
In an executive order titled “Guaranteeing the States Protection Against Invasion,” President Trump said illegal crossings had become bad enough to declare the situation an invasion. “I have determined that the current state of the southern border reveals that the Federal Government has failed in fulfilling this obligation to the States and hereby declare that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border.” […]
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