President Trump campaigned on a pledge to crack down on illegal immigration. But since taking office, he’s primarily targeted several longstanding programs that give migrants lawful ways to come to the U.S.
Trump has boasted he would target immigrants not legally in the country, denouncing them as criminals and threatening swift deportation.
But a flurry of executive actions and new memos from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) show the Trump administration has largely focused on those in the country legally — suspending the refugee program and targeting other pathways that allow migrants to enter or remain in the country.
“These new executive actions aren’t just limited to unauthorized immigration. In fact, many of them explicitly target legal pathways, which are essential lifelines for those taking safety and opportunity,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge, which helps resettle refugees.
“And unfortunately, this approach risks undermining America’s long standing role as a safe haven for refugees and disrupts systems designed to offer orderly, lawful migration.”
Just hours after taking office, the Trump administration shut down the CBP One App, where migrants could book an appointment at a port of entry where they could present an initial case for gaining asylum protections that are offered under both U.S. and international law.
Later that night, he signed a series of executive actions targeting immigration, including seeking to block birthright citizenship guaranteed under the Constitution to those who are born here.
Other actions targeted parole programs that Republicans complained were overused by former President Biden but that nonetheless allowed Afghan evacuees and Ukrainian refugees into the country, along with migrants from certain Latin American countries.
The end of the CBP One app struck a nerve with immigration advocates, who said it counters Republican rhetoric that immigrants need “to get in line.”
“The CBP One app was by no means perfect, but it was absolutely an attempt at implementing a tool to modernize asylum processing at the U.S.-Mexico border, by creating a virtual line for asylum appointments,” said Nayna Gupta, policy director at the American Immigration Council.
“The 260,000 people waiting at the U.S.-Mexico border to try to get a CBP One appointment were doing precisely that. They were following the rules and trying to get in line, and the 30,000 people who were already in line with an appointment now have nowhere to go.”
Many of Trump’s orders likewise target those already lawfully in the U.S.
His order on birthright citizenship doesn’t just target the children of those in the country unlawfully, it also would bar the children of anyone in the U.S. on a nonimmigrant visa from obtaining citizenship at birth.
The order has already been put on ice by a judge as it contradicts the 14th Amendment, which guarantees citizenship to anyone born within U.S. territory. U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour called the order “blatantly unconstitutional.”
By applying it to those on nonimmigrant visas, the order would also impact those on student and employment visas who are authorized to be in the U.S.
“Two people here in the United States on a student visa, or two people on H-1B visas who have a kid, that child, that baby, has no status in the United States, no citizenship, no green card, no temporary protection,” Gupta said.
“And that is an unprecedented undermining of how we treat people on nonimmigrant visas who come to our country to contribute in a variety of ways.”
Vignarajah said for those whose parents come from countries that don’t recognize foreign births, it could also leave children in limbo.
“If there’s a newborn child on the way…that child could end up being stateless,” she said.
The Trump administration has also taken actions to unwind Biden’s use of parole authority, a process under law for admitting into the U.S. those who do not otherwise meet immigration requirements.
It’s the mechanism Biden used for Uniting for Ukraine, allowing Ukrainians fleeing the impacts of the Russian invasion to come to the U.S.
It was also a pathway for many Afghans fleeing to the U.S. after the military withdrawal, as many faced risks to their life due to associations with the Americans.
But Biden sparked the most pushback from Republicans for the program’s use for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.
Though a legal pathway for entering the U.S., it’s one that Republicans have argued Biden abused by using widely, rather than on a case-by-case basis.
A suit launched by GOP-led states however, was rejected by a Trump-appointed judge who found they did not have standing to fight the program.
Trump in a Day One order said he would terminate parole used in the Latin American countries.
But a later DHS order expanded immigration agents’ ability to use expedited removal proceedings. That allows migrants paroled into the country to be quickly removed with little review even after they were told they could work in the U.S. for two years.
“The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country. This was all stopped on day one of the Trump Administration. This action will return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis,” DHS said in a statement on Trump’s first full day in office.
Vignarajah said the Trump administration ignored that parole is offered based in part on “detailed assessments of conditions on the ground.”
“It’s one thing to shut down a pathway going forward, but it’s worrisome to focus enforcement efforts on people who are here because they followed an orderly legal process. These are families who have U.S.-based sponsors who came forward to petition on their behalf. These are families who risk being returned to dire circumstances in deeply destabilized countries like Haiti and Venezuela,” she said.
Gupta countered Republican claims, saying Biden was well within his authority.
“The parole authority as granted by Congress to the president and the executive branch was intended to offer a great amount of discretion so that the president could be responsive to urgent humanitarian crises,” she said, whether that was to an individual or an entire pool.
But she also faulted Biden for the temporary nature of the program: giving two years of work authorization but no way to gain permanent residency.
“The extension of parole is a temporary status. The failure to create an off-ramp for those who entered the United States on that program meant that there would be hundreds of thousands of people at risk of losing that protection if a presidential administration did not renew that protection and offer a pathway…to be here more permanently,” she said.
“The Trump administration is exploiting the fact that this is a program that didn’t offer that off ramp.”
Vignarajah said she was worried the disruption of legal pathways would ultimately push more migrants to seek the help of cartels to cross the border.
“People seeking safety and opportunity generally want to come the right way, but we cut off the very pathways that exist in our deeply outdated immigration system. I fear for the most desperate of families, they’re going to do what it takes to get here. Even if that means paying their life savings to cartel smugglers,” she said.
“And that’s how U.S. immigration policy can end up pushing people towards exploitation and ultimately line the pockets of the very transnational criminal organizations we’re trying to fight.”
