3 hours ago

Trump declares national border emergency in immigration crackdown

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.

From the White House on Monday, Trump signed an order declaring a national emergency and paving the way to send US troops to the southern border. He also attempted an audacious move to redefine who gets to become an American under the US constitution.

“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border,” Trump had said earlier in his inaugural address on Monday, moments after being sworn into office in Washington. “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.”

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,” reinstate a first-term policy forcing people seeking asylum to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed, and move to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed under the 14th amendment, by directing the federal government not to recognize the children of undocumented immigrants.

The president cannot unilaterally change the constitution, and civil rights groups have already vowed immediately to challenge such a directive in court.

The administration also intends to designate drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and resume construction of the tall barrier along the US-Mexico border that Trump spent heavily on during his first administration but which Biden halted in its tracks when he assumed office in 2021.

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.

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 on Monday announced 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.

To facilitate deportations, Trump is expected to order the construction of camps to hold targeted migrants, probably with military involvement.

Meanwhile, CBP One was an effort under Biden to stem unlawful border crossings and encourage migrants to seek official permission to enter the US, usually in order to lodge asylum claims and live and work legally while doing so.

Thousands have waited on the Mexican side of the border until they got an appointment, rather than risk crossing without authorization and turning themselves in to border patrol or evading the authorities. Now those who came in that way to the US fear deportation while those waiting south of the border trying CBP One every day 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.

“The application has been widely touted by DHS officials as improving management of the US southern border and making processing orderly and safe. This move by the incoming administration will only play into the hands of cartels and smugglers, whom they profess to want to eliminate. This move is really about cruelty and not about effective management of our borders.”

Read more of the Guardian’s Trump coverage