Trump Starts Second Presidency Hot Out of the Gate on Immigration

Almost immediately after he again took office as president, Donald Trump began issuing orders to secure the Southwest border and to shut down access to the CBP One app for aliens without visas seeking entry through the ports. In horse racing, we refer to that as “hot out of the gate”, but it should not be a surprise that the president is moving quickly to keep his immigration promises — an electoral issue he thinks was bigger than inflation in voters’ minds in November.

CBP One App Interview Scheme. In a January 5, 2023, fact sheet, the Biden-Harris White House announced:

When Title 42 eventually lifts, noncitizens located in Central and Northern Mexico seeking to enter the United States lawfully through a U.S. port of entry have access to the CBP One mobile application for scheduling an appointment to present themselves for inspection and to initiate a protection claim instead of coming directly to a port of entry to wait.

I dubbed that plan the “CBP One app interview scheme”, and there’s no authorization for it anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). And while the White House “fact sheet” announcing that scheme contended it was intended to allow illegal migrants to “initiate a protection claim”, CBP officers didn’t ask migrants who showed up for those appointments whether they came seeking asylum.

Through the end of December, more than 936,500 inadmissible applicants for admission had scheduled interview appointments using the app, and congressional disclosures revealed that 95.8 percent of the aliens who showed up at the ports for those appointments were subsequently allowed to enter the United States on parole.

Do the math, and you’ll see it equals nearly 900,000 illegal migrants who were allowed to resettle in this country under the CBP One app interview scheme. That ended almost immediately after Trump took the oath at 12:01 PM EST on January 20.

The CBP One app website now carries a banner at the top that reads: “Effective January 20, 2025, the functionalities of CBP One that previously allowed undocumented aliens to submit advance information and schedule appointments at eight southwest border ports of entry is no longer available, and existing appointments have been cancelled.”

Somebody on the transition plainly planned that message out well in advance, particularly given the fact that it uses a legal term, “alien” (defined at section 101(a)(3) of the INA), that was declared verboten early on in the Biden administration.

It didn’t take long for tweets like this one to start appearing in response:

Expect more to follow.

“Remain in Mexico” Likely the best known — and most effective — of the various measures that the first Trump administration implemented to secure the Southwest border was the Migrant Protection Protocols — officially abbreviated as “MPP”, but more commonly referred to as “Remain in Mexico”.

MPP was implemented in response to an unprecedented surge in third-country nationals and adults with children in “family units” (FMUs) entering illegally across the Southwest border. Of the more than 153,000 migrants caught crossing the border in the first three months of FY 2019, for example, nearly half were in family units.

Under Remain in Mexico, inadmissible aliens encountered by CBP at the Southwest border who made asylum claims were sent back across the border to await their removal hearings, which were held in specially erected border-adjacent “port courts”.

Those alien respondents whose claims were granted were admitted, while migrants whose claims were denied were quickly removed.

After a phased-in implementation and legal challenges, MPP was up and running by October 2019, when DHS issued its assessment of the program.

That assessment concluded that MPP was “an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system”. Southwest border encounters dropped by 64 percent between May and September 2019, and encounters with “Central American families — who were the main driver of the crisis … decreased by approximately 80 percent”.

Then-candidate Joe Biden railed against the program on the 2020 campaign trail, and after taking office he suspended MPP before his DHS terminated the program (twice).

A briefly successful legal challenge by the states of Texas and Missouri followed, and between November 2021 and August 2022, the Biden administration was forced to return fewer than 12,500 illegal entrants under Remain in Mexico.

In June 2022, however, the Supreme Court shut the state’s case down and Remain in Mexico returned to hiatus.

In his inaugural address, the president stated he would “declare a national emergency at our southern border”, and “reinstate” his “Remain in Mexico policy”.

While the executive order reinstating MPP has yet to be published, news of renewal of the program alone will likely curb illegal entries.

For his part, Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente describes the move as “a unilateral decision that they have taken”, one that his government — which has “a different focus” — “does not share”. That may not make much difference if Trump brings economic pressure to bear on Mexico City.

Trump told a pre-inauguration gathering of supporters that immigration was more a impactful issue in his November victory than even inflation. Now that he has retaken office, he’s moving quickly to deliver on his border promises.