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Trump’s immigration crackdown also targets legal ways to enter the U.S.
Washington — The Trump administration’s swift crackdown on immigration has moved beyond those living in or entering the U.S. illegally, with officials also issuing bans and restrictions on legal immigration, including programs for refugees displaced by violence.
President Trump made getting tough on illegal immigration a pillar of his presidential campaign, and he has already enacted far-reaching measures targeting those who violated U.S. immigration law. They include sealing the U.S. asylum system for those without proper documents; tasking the military with deporting immigration violators; and empowering deportation officers to target most unauthorized immigrants, including those without criminal records.
But, with less fanfare, Mr. Trump’s actions have closed pathways for vetting and legally admitting hundreds of thousands of people fleeing war-torn Ukraine, Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and other troubled parts of the world, including crisis-stricken Haiti and Venezuela.
Refugee admissions suspended
Hours after taking office, Mr. Trump indefinitely paused the U.S. refugee admissions program, instructing officials to ban the entry of all refugees, a special legal classification for people vetted overseas who prove they are fleeing persecution based on their political beliefs, religion or other factors.
Unpublished State Department statistics obtained by CBS News show the move stranded more than 22,000 refugees who had been approved for departure to the U.S. after undergoing a process that, on average, takes between 18 and 24 months due to rounds of interviews, security screenings and medical checks.
As part of its suspension of foreign aid, the administration instructed the resettlement agencies that integrate refugees into American communities to stop using certain federal funds — a directive advocates believe will prevent them from providing critical services to those refugees already in the U.S.
Refuge admissions will only be restarted if Mr. Trump determines that doing so “is in the interests of the United States,” according to his directive. In that order, he argued refugees were a strain on American communities.
Immigration process for Afghans, Ukrainians and others halted
The Trump administration has also directed officials to cease allowing immigrants into the U.S. through an immigration policy known as parole, which can be used to grant entry to foreigners on humanitarian or public interest grounds. The Biden administration used that law at an unprecedented scale, including to dissuade migrants from traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border.
An internal directive by the acting head of U.S. Citizenship of Immigration Services last week ordered officials to stop granting parole to Ukrainians sponsored by Americans through the Uniting for Ukraine policy, which the Biden administration set up to offer a safe haven to those fleeing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Roughly 240,000 Ukrainians came to the U.S. under the process, according to unpublished government data.
It also instructed officials to refrain from renewing the parole status of Afghans brought to the U.S. following the fall of Kabul in 2021. While many of the more than 70,000 Afghan evacuees have gained asylum or special visas for those who aided the American military, the move could prompt some to lose their legal status.
The order suspended processing for other parole-based programs, including a sponsorship initiative for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and an Obama-era policy that allowed some Central American youth to come to the country legally to reunite with relatives. Both policies were designed to be alternatives to trekking to the U.S. southern border.
While those paroled into the country are, on paper, in the U.S. legally and with the ability to work lawfully, Trump administration officials have argued the Biden administration improperly used the authority, which they believe should only be used in very limited cases.
Just minutes after Mr. Trump was sworn in, his administration shut down a mobile application, known as CBP One, that allowed migrants in Mexico to request a time to enter the U.S. at official border entry points. U.S. border officials were welcoming 1,500 migrants per day under that app during the Biden administration, which touted the process as the right way to seek asylum since crossing between ports of entry is illegal.
Last week, Trump officials authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to revoke the parole status of those allowed into the U.S. under the Biden administration and seek their deportation. That would include more than 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who flew to the U.S. under the sponsor policy and nearly 1 million migrants allowed into the country through CBP One, government figures show.
Other actions targeting legal migration channels
Trump officials moved quickly to cease operations at offices that the Biden administration established in four Latin American countries to vet and screen migrants for legal immigration programs and discourage them from unlawfully crossing the southern border. Those hubs, known as “Safe Mobility Offices,” also vetted migrants for resettlement in Spain and Canada.
Mr. Trump’s move to upend birthright citizenship — for now, halted in the courts — would deny citizenship to children born in the U.S. to immigrants on temporary visas (as well as to those with parents who are in the country illegally).
Other restrictions on legal immigration are also expected further into Mr. Trump’s term. He already tasked federal agencies to recommend partial or total immigration bans for countries whose citizens officials determine cannot be properly vetted.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Global Refuge, a refugee resettlement group, said she appreciated some of the comments Mr. Trump has made in support of legal immigration. But she said she was deeply troubled by his move to halt refugee arrivals.
“Canceling flights for already approved refugees who have waited years as they’ve gone through extreme vetting betrays promises we made in creating this bipartisan legal program,” Vignarajah said, calling the refugee process the “gold standard” in legal immigration.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a group that advocates for cutting legal immigration, said Mr. Trump is cracking down on immigration programs he believes former President Biden “unlawfully created or unlawfully abused.”
Krikorian said Biden used the parole authority, for example, as a “means of essentially freelancing his own parallel immigration system outside the law, so that has to be restricted.”
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