President Donald Trump plans to issue 10 executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office, including declaring a national emergency at the border, an incoming White House official said Monday morning.
The executive orders will follow Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to issue mass deportations immediately after taking office.
Trump said during his inaugural address that he would declare a national emergency at the southern border.
“Illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said.
The state of emergency would allow the Defense Department to deploy the military and the National Guard to the border. Officials declined to elaborate on how many troops would be sent or the parameters of their actions, saying it would be up to the Defense Department to make those determinations.
The Trump administration also said it would end birthright citizenship, the right of children born in the U.S. to claim citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
Birthright citizenship has been understood to be required under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
To change the Constitution would require approval from two-thirds of Congress and ratification by three-quarters of states, an extremely high bar. Democrats and some legal groups have vowed to challenge in court any Trump attempt to do away with birthright citizenship.
“Ending birthright citizenship is anti-America and unconstitutional,” Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., wrote on X, vowing to “fight this un-American executive order.”
The official said Trump intends to end the practice referred to as “catch and release.” Trump vowed in his first term to end the practice, but migrants were still released after crossing the border because of limits in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention space.
The Trump administration also plans to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which allowed Trump in his first term to keep migrants of all nationalities from crossing into the United States from Mexico until they had an appointment for asylum. The official did not detail whether that country had agreed to any terms on it.
Mexican Secretary of Foreign Affairs Juan Ramón de la Fuente told news media at the Mexican president’s morning meeting that the plan is “a unilateral decision that they have taken,” adding, “We do not share it. We have a different focus.”
He spoke before the Trump official announced the 10 planned executive orders on immigration, in response to previous news reports that Trump would look to reinstate the policy. It was unclear if the Mexican government would prevent the Trump administration from carrying out the policy, which could present a hurdle for the plan.
The official also said they would continue building the border wall and suspend refugee resettlement for at least four months.
The administration also intends to target drug cartels and what it called migrant gangs, referring specifically to MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.
“Under the orders I signed today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said during his inaugural address.
The designation would make it illegal for anyone to provide aid or collaborate with the groups and allow the federal government to prosecute people supporting the cartels in any way on charges of providing material support to terrorists. It would also allow the administration to put known members on the terrorist watchlist so that they could be arrested, stopped from flying into the U.S., or stopped from crossing the U.S. border simply for being part of the group.
“I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities,” Trump said.
Changes to the immigration system have already begun. CBP One, a government app used by migrants to submit their information and schedule appointments at southwest border ports of entry, is no longer available for that purpose, according to a statement posted on the Customs and Border Protection website.
Existing appointments scheduled through the app have been canceled, the statement added.
Those canceled appointments likely number in the thousands. Over 936,000 people scheduled appointments through the app in the two years since the agency began using it for that purpose. In December alone, CBP processed approximately 44,000 asylum seekers who submitted their information through the app.
CBP One’s functions were expanded under the Biden administration to facilitate asylum appointments for migrants, amid growing numbers of people trying to cross the southern border. It was being used by migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela with sponsors in the U.S. to begin the process to get paroled into the country for two years.
App users began receiving pop-up notifications saying CBP One appointments “are no longer valid” in different languages on Monday.
