Trump issues a slew of immigration-related executive orders on first day of new term

What Trump’s executive orders on immigration seek to do

• End birthright citizenship for future children born to mothers who are in the United States unlawfully or temporarily unless the child’s father is here legally and permanently
• Direct federal agencies to identify countries that do not provide sufficient information on their nationals and to bar those nationals from entry to the U.S.
• Send the military to the border by declaring a national emergency
• Halt all refugee admissions into the United States until policy “aligns” with U.S. interests
• Designate cartels and migrant gangs MS-13 and Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations
• Restrict federal funds from sanctuary cities and potentially take legal action against them
• Require immigrants unlawfully in the United States to register and be fingerprinted
• End the CBP One program and the parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans
• Deny public benefits to unauthorized immigrants
• Reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy

President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders related to immigration on his first day in office, including declaring a national emergency at the border. He made the actions official during a signing at the Oval Office on Monday.

The executive orders follow Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to issue mass deportations immediately after taking office.

“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,” Trump said during his inaugural address.

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. App users began receiving pop-up notifications saying CBP One appointments “are no longer valid” in different languages on Monday. Hours later, President Trump signed an executive order to end the program.

Immigration advocacy groups took legal action against the move to end CBP One, filing a motion for an emergency status conference in D.C. District Court.

“Whether or not Trump enacts additional border policies, the termination of the CBP One appointment process means there is now no way for anyone to seek asylum at the border, even for families,” said Lee Gelernt, the lawyer representing the ACLU in the case.

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.

Additionally, Trump suspended a web site used by migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela with sponsors in the U.S. to apply to be paroled into the country for two years. That program brought more than 800,000 migrants from those countries to the United States over the past two years.

The state of emergency declared by Trump allows the Defense Department to deploy the military and the National Guard to the border. White House officials declined to elaborate on how many troops would be sent.

The executive action said the troops would help support Department of Homeland Security personnel with logistics, including securing detention space and transporting migrants. The language was in keeping with the Constitution, which prohibits the military from enforcing domestic law inside the U.S. by arresting immigrants.

Trump also signed an executive order to instruct government agencies not to recognize children born in the United States as U.S. citizens if their mother was unlawfully present in the United States and the father was not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident at the time of birth. The order effectively seeks to end birthright citizenship, a right enshrined in the Constitution that gives children born in the U.S. citizenship regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

The order also says the federal government should not recognize children as U.S. citizens if they were born to mothers who had lawful but temporary status in the United States and the father was not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident at the time of birth.

The order states that children born to lawful permanent residents, known as green card holders, are entitled to citizenship.

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.”

In the executive order on birthright citizenship, the Trump administration asserted that the Constitution had been misinterpreted by an 1857 Supreme Court decision. The order is likely to be subject to legal challenges that will assert the Trump administration needs to change the U.S. Constitution by passing an amendment through two-thirds vote from Congress, 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.”

Another executive order paved the way for Trump to boost deportations, his signature campaign promise on immigration.

It instructs federal agencies to identify countries that do not provide sufficient information about their citizens for the United States to be able to vet and screen them. Nationals from those countries would then be suspended from entering the United States. The order, which goes further than the travel ban in Trump’s first term that barred entry from 13 specific countries, instructs the federal government to identify how many citizens from those countries entered the United States since Biden took office.

That order also leaves the door open for the Trump administration to deport migrants who exercise free speech that is critical of the United States. It directs federal agencies to ensure immigrants already in the United States “do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions or founding principles.”

An executive order directs the Department of Homeland Security to establish a registry for undocumented immigrants and require them to be fingerprinted. It also targets so-called sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with the ICE by restricting federal funds and potentially taking legal action against them.

A separate order aims to end the practice referred to as “catch and release” by “removing promptly all aliens who enter or remain in violation of Federal law,” according to language from the executive order.

Trump vowed in his first term to end the practice, but migrants were still released after crossing the border because Immigration and Customs Enforcement still lacked adequate detention space.

The Trump administration is also reinstating 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 Foreign Minister of Mexico said the Trump administration made the decision without an agreement with Mexico.

Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and members of her Cabinet expressed their disagreement with his plan to revive the policy and the “unilateral decision” to push migrants attempting to cross into the United States back into northern Mexico.

“This is a unilateral decision that they have taken. If they can do it, they are in their right. We do not necessarily share in this fact. We do not share it,” said Mexican Foreign Minister Juan Ramon de la Fuente.

An executive order also instructed the federal government to continue building the border wall. Another order indefinitely suspended refugee resettlement in the United States until the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program “realigns with the interest of the United States.”

The administration is also targeting 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.

Another executive order directed the Department of Defense to develop a plan to “seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities” within 10 days of the signing.