President Trump issued a raft of executive orders that effectively block migrants from entering the United States and applying for asylum, closing off major legal channels for immigration.
President Trump kicked off his second tour of the White House on Monday with a spate of executive orders that aimed to seal off the nation from immigrants by closing off legal channels for migrants to enter, especially access to asylum.
In one of his first executive orders, called “Securing Our Borders,” Mr. Trump directed his administration to end programs former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. put in place that gave migrants opportunities to apply for asylum once they were in the United States. He also reprised restrictive orders from his first administration that Mr. Biden had reversed or ended while in office.
“Millions of illegal aliens from nations and regions all around the world successfully entered the United States where they are now residing, including potential terrorists, foreign spies, members of cartels, gangs and violent transnational criminal organizations and other hostile actors with malicious intent,” Mr. Trump wrote in the order.
Mr. Trump spent much of his first term focusing on the idea of building a wall to keep out migrants. But his actions this week to change border policies had a much more immediate and far-reaching impact, effectively closing off the country to migrants, including those fleeing persecution and violence.
Here is how his plan works.
Trump shut down an app to facilitate orderly entries.
Minutes after Mr. Trump took the oath of office, his team disabled CBP One, a government program that allowed migrants to secure appointments to enter the country. The Biden administration used the smartphone app, initially developed by the first Trump administration, to provide a safe and more orderly way to cross land borders into the country without having to risk their lives sneaking across the Rio Grande, for example.
Migrants were given parole, which gave them temporary permission to be in the country. They were also given permission to work. Mr. Trump included this directive in his broad “Securing Our Borders” order.