Posted on January 27, 2025

Trump Officials Empower DHS to Expel Migrants Allowed Under 2 Biden Programs

Joel Rose, NPR, January 24, 2025

A Trump administration memo has paved the way for immigration authorities to quickly remove migrants who were temporarily admitted to the country during the Biden administration.

More than 1 million migrants were allowed into the U.S. under two Biden-era programs, despite objections from critics who said those programs themselves were illegal.

It’s part of a broad push by the Trump administration to deliver on the immigration crackdown he promised during the campaign, quickly sweeping aside the immigration policies of the previous administration.

That includes migrants admitted through the CBP One app, which allowed migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry to begin making their asylum claims. The Trump administration shut the app’s scheduling function down on Monday, leaving migrants waiting at ports of entry in Mexico in despair.

The memo could also apply to migrants admitted to the U.S. through a program for people fleeing Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. That program was also terminated this week.

The two programs were part of what the Biden administration called “lawful pathways” that were intended to discourage migrants from crossing the southern U.S. border illegally to seek asylum. But immigration hardliners argued that the programs themselves were unlawful.

“Those mass parole programs dealt with illegal immigration by just legalizing it,” said Mark Krikorian, the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies {snip} “It was, in a sense, the Biden administration telling people who wanted to come here, don’t break the law by crossing the border illegally. We’ll break it for you by letting you in illegally.”

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