In his third day in office, President Donald Trump signed more executive orders aimed at shutting down the U.S. southern border to immigration and ramping up deportations — though large scale deportation raids had yet to materialize as of Wednesday afternoon.
According to a fact sheet released by the White House, Trump signed an executive order that “suspends the physical entry of aliens engaged in an invasion of the United States through the southern border.”
The order directs the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice and State to “take all necessary action to immediately repel, repatriate and remove illegal aliens across the southern border of the United States.”
But the details of how Trump will block migrants attempting to cross remain unclear.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox News that Trump is “using every lever of his executive power to secure our nation’s borders.”
She added that “ports of entry are the places to be processed and to apply to come into this country,” indicated Trump would allow ports of entry to remain open to asylum seekers.
However, the CBP One app, which was previously used by migrants to submit their information and schedule appointments at southwest border ports of entry, stopped working for that purpose in the immediate hours after Trump took office. Existing appointments scheduled through the app were canceled, according to a statement posted on the Customs and Border Protection website Monday.
Late Tuesday, the Trump administration published in the federal register a notice to expand “expedited removal,” which allows ICE to deport migrants without due process, to any undocumented immigrants who have crossed the border within two years. The federal register logs regulatory changes made by the federal government.
Previously, the Biden administration applied expedited removal to recent arrivals who did not qualify for asylum when they crossed the southern border. Now, the Trump administration will be able to deport any migrants who have been in the United States for less than two years, regardless of where they are encountered in the country, and without giving them a day in immigration court to make their claim.
The new order could speed up Trump’s ability to deport migrants by bypassing immigration courts, which are currently saddled with a backlog of 3 million cases.
The Trump administration fired four top officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees U.S. immigration courts, late Monday. The four fired officials had decades of experience leading the nation’s overburdened immigration courts. The Justice Department employs more than 700 immigration judges, who decide whether migrants seeking asylum in the United States can remain in the country legally.
As of Wednesday evening, deportations did not appear to have drastically increased. Border Czar Tom Homan said on Fox News on Wednesday morning that ICE agents arrested 308 migrants over the past 24 hours. In September, the latest month for which ICE data is available, 282 migrants were arrested by the agency on average per day.
A source familiar with the recent arrests said they were part of “routine operations” across the United States.
While the arrests targeted immigrants with criminal records, the source could not confirm whether migrants without criminal records would be arrested as “collateral arrests” because they were found in the same area.
