President Donald Trump issued additional executive orders on his third day in office with the goal of closing the southern U.S. border to immigration and increasing deportations, though as of Wednesday afternoon, large-scale deportation sweeps had not yet taken place.
Trump signed an executive order that prohibits foreigners involved in an invasion of the United States across the southern border from physically entering the country, according to a White House fact sheet.
The directive instructs the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and State to take all necessary steps to promptly deter, repatriate, and remove unlawful aliens from the United States’ southern border.
However, it’s still unclear exactly how Trump would stop people from trying to cross.
Trump is using every executive tool at his disposal to secure our country’s borders, White House spokesman Karoline Leavitt stated on Fox News.
Trump will permit ports of entry to remain open to asylum-seekers, she noted, adding that these are the locations where people go to be processed and apply to enter our nation.
However, shortly after Trump took office, the CBP One app—which migrants had previously used to submit their information and make appointments at ports of entry along the southwest border—ceased to function for that purpose. A message on the Customs and Border Protection website on Monday said that existing appointments made via the app were canceled.
A notice to increase expedited removal, which permits U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove any undocumented immigrants who have crossed the border within the last two years without due process, was published in the federal register by the Trump administration late Tuesday. The federal government’s regulatory amendments are recorded in the federal register.
In the past, when new entrants crossed the southern border and did not meet the requirements for asylum, the Biden administration used expedited removal. No matter where they are found in the country, the Trump administration will now have the authority to deport any foreign national who has been in the country for less than two years without providing them with a day in immigration court to present their case.
By avoiding the immigration courts, which are now facing a backlog of three million cases, the new order may expedite Trump’s deportation of migrants.
Late Monday, four senior officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review—which is in charge of U.S. immigration courts—were sacked by the Trump administration. The four dismissed officials led the nation’s overworked immigration courts for decades. More than 700 immigration judges work for the Justice Department, making decisions about the legality of allowing migrants to stay in the United States after applying for asylum.
Deportations did not seem to have significantly escalated as of Wednesday evening. On Wednesday morning, Tom Homan, the border czar, stated on Fox News that 308 migrants had been taken into custody by ICE in the last 24 hours. The most recent month for which ICE statistics is available, September, had an average of 282 migrant arrests per day.
According to a source with knowledge of the latest arrests, they were a part of regular operations throughout the US.
Although immigrants with criminal records were the goal of the arrests, the source was unable to verify if those without criminal records would also be arrested as collateral because they were discovered in the same location.