President Donald Trump set in motion some of his most controversial immigration promises during his first week back in office, declaring a national emergency at the United States’s southern border, ordering his administration to reinstate some of his first-term policies and ending programmes that allowed people to legally enter the US.
Some of Trump’s actions took effect immediately – such as suspending the refugee resettlement programme. Others, such as ending birthright citizenship, are already facing legal challenges or will require additional funding and diplomatic agreements to be enforced. Immigration experts say the actions send a clear message and are already affecting immigrants in the country.
“What is particularly evident already about these actions is the confusion, fear, and uncertainty these policies are already evoking for immigrant families and their communities,” Thomas J Rachko, Jr, research manager at Georgetown University’s Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute, said.
PolitiFact’s MAGA-Meter is tracking the progress on 75 campaign promises Trump made during the presidential campaign, including several on immigration. Here’s a sampling of what Trump did in his first week back in the White House.
Declared an ‘invasion’ to deploy the military to the southwest border
On his first day in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, laying the foundation for him to deploy armed forces there to help immigration officials stop entries of undocumented immigrants and resume building border barriers.
“It is necessary for the Armed Forces to take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border,” Trump’s declaration said.
Following Trump’s order, the Department of Defense said it was sending 1,500 ground personnel, helicopters and intelligence analysts “to support increased detection and monitoring efforts”.
Trump’s declaration also empowers him to put already allocated Defense Department money towards fulfilling his campaign promise of “finishing the wall”. Barring the declaration, he would have to wait for Congress to give him the money, a less certain thing.
Ended programmes and policies that allow people to legally enter the US
Trump says he supports legal immigration, but he signed orders pausing or ending some programmes that let people legally enter the US.
CBP One: He ended the CBP One app that let people make appointments at official ports of entry to begin requesting asylum. (Trump launched this app during his first term, but it was used to schedule the inspection of perishable cargo entering the US.) The Homeland Security Department cancelled about 30,000 appointments, The Washington Post reported.
Humanitarian parole: Trump also ended a humanitarian parole programme that let Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans come in legally and work with authorisation for at least two years. About 530,000 people came in this way during Joe Biden’s administration, Homeland Security data shows.
Refugee programme: Since the refugee resettlement programme’s formalisation in 1980, the US has given people who are persecuted, or fear persecution, a haven, allowing them to move to the US legally and eventually become eligible for US citizenship. On his first day, Trump paused this programme indefinitely. He said the US cannot absorb large numbers of refugees without compromising Americans’ resources and security.
Refugees are vetted before being allowed to enter the US and must pass biometric and biographical background checks and be interviewed by US Citizenship and Immigration Services officers overseas beforehand.
With the programme suspended, the Homeland Security and state secretaries can admit refugees case by case. Every 90 days, they must also submit a report to Trump, detailing whether resuming the refugee programme would benefit the US.
Limited birthright citizenship leading to legal challenges
Aligning with his 2024 campaign promise, Trump signed an executive order restricting birthright citizenship – people’s right to become American citizens when they are born in the US. Under Trump’s order, people born in the US are not citizens if their mother is either in the US temporarily or illegally and if the father is neither a citizen nor a permanent resident.
Multiple states sued Trump over the order’s constitutionality. On January 23, a federal judge blocked Trump’s order for 14 days saying its “harms are immediate, ongoing, and significant, and cannot be remedied in the ordinary course of litigation”.
Trump signing the order on the first day is “testing the outer limits of executive branch power in the immigration sphere”, Erin Corcoran, executive director of Notre Dame University’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, said.
Restarted Trump era programme requiring people to stay in Mexico awaiting court hearings
Trump instructed the Department of Homeland Security to reinstate the Remain in Mexico programme that sent certain migrants seeking asylum to Mexico to await their US immigration court proceedings. He started this policy in January 2019 and Biden ended it during his administration.
The Homeland Security Department said it restarted the programme on January 21, but immigration experts have previously said to apply the policy, the US needs Mexico’s consent.
On January 22, President Claudia Sheinbaum said in a news conference that Mexico has not agreed to accept US asylum seekers. But, she added that the government would provide migrants with humanitarian assistance and options for returning to their home countries.
Expanded process for quick deportations without due process
To start one of his cornerstone campaign promises, to carry out the largest deportations in US history, Trump’s Homeland Security Department expanded the use of expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process. Under expedited removal, immigration agents can deport people without a court hearing if those people lack a credible asylum case.
Under the new policy, agents can deport people living in the US who cannot prove they have been in the country for more than two years. Previously, agents used expedited removal only on people who were in the US for less than two weeks and who were detained within 100 miles of a US border.
Trump’s administration also revoked an order that barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from conducting deportations at schools, religious buildings and healthcare centres.
Also, Trump directed the Homeland Security and Treasury secretaries to designate cartels and other groups as foreign “terrorist’ organisations. This order could set the stage for Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that lets the president quickly deport noncitizens without due process if they are from a country at war with the US.
