Trump Begins Immigration Crackdown, Enlisting the Military and Testing the Law

 

President Trump’s flurry of executive actions on immigration in the hours after taking office was the leading edge of an effort to roll back four years of policies put in place by the Biden administration and reimpose an agenda that would fundamentally upend the United States’ global role as a sanctuary for refugees and immigrants.

In a series of orders he signed on Monday evening, President Trump moved to seal the nation’s borders against migrants and systematically crack down on undocumented immigrants already in the United States, part of a policy barrage that included a national emergency declaration to deploy the military to the border and a bid to cut off birthright citizenship for the children of noncitizens.

While some of the orders were likely to face steep legal challenges and might be difficult or impossible to enforce, the directives sent an unmistakable message that Mr. Trump was serious about fulfilling his frequent campaign promises of clamping down on the border, and escalating an anti-immigration agenda that he has made the centerpiece of his political identity.

“With these actions we will begin the complete restoration of America and the revolution of common sense,” Mr. Trump said from the Capitol Rotunda after taking his oath of office. “All 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.”

Just minutes after Mr. Trump took the oath, his administration shut down a government program created by his predecessor that allowed migrants to secure appointments for admission into the United States through legal ports of entry through an app. Switching off the program, known as C.B.P. One, plunged about 30,000 migrants who had existing appointments to enter the United States into limbo, and indicated that it would now be far more difficult.

Hours later in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump moved to block asylum seekers and seal the border against those looking for protection in the United States. The Trump administration argued the illegal border crossings posed a national security and public health concern. Rather than citing a specific threat of disease, Mr. Trump simply said that migrants did not provide border authorities with “comprehensive health information,” posing a public health risk.

He declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border to allow him to circumvent Congress and unlock federal funding for border wall construction and other enforcement efforts. Mr. Trump appeared to go further than simply having the military support border authorities with construction. He also signed an order that gave the military an explicit role in immigration enforcement and directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion.”

The directive would likely clash with an 1870s law called the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally limits the use of regular federal troops for domestic policing purposes.

“That is really dangerous and wrong-headed,” said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s School of Law, who added that the order directed the military to treat the border not as a law enforcement matter but as a full-scale military campaign.

President Trump took the steps even as the current state of the border is fairly calm, with crossings having fallen sharply after the Biden administration took major steps to limit migration.

Still, the executive actions, many of which Mr. Trump had previewed in recent years, are an attempt to make good on a promise to curtail immigration and enact mass deportations.

In another order issued on Monday, Mr. Trump declared that his government would no longer treat all U.S.-born children as citizens, signaling his intention to essentially ignore the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. The order directed federal agencies, starting in 30 days, not to issue citizenship documents to U.S.-born children of an undocumented mother, or a mother on a temporary visa, if the father is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident.

The move would amount to an extraordinary change of the 157-year-old 14th Amendment, and within hours it prompted a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union.

President Trump cannot abolish birthright citizenship on his own. Any change to the Constitution requires supermajority votes in Congress, and then ratification by three-quarters of the states. But denying certain immigrants’ children of citizenship documents would effectively mean that they could be barred from using public services, which could have the same effect as abolishing the right.

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