DIPLOMACY
Trump launches sweeping border crackdown, mass deportation push
President Donald Trump on Monday kicked off his sweeping immigration crackdown, tasking the U.S. military with aiding border security, issuing a broad ban on asylum and taking steps to restrict citizenship for children born on U.S. soil.
Declaring illegal immigration a national emergency, Trump ordered the Pentagon to provide support for border wall construction, detention space, and migrant transportation and empowered the secretary of Defense to send troops to the border as needed.
Trump called for his administration to reinstate his “remain in Mexico” program, which forced non-Mexican migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their U.S. cases.
Asylum seekers with appointments made through the U.S. Customs and Border Protection CBP One application scheduled for the morning of January 20, the final asylum appointment in Piedras Negras before the inauguration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, wait at the entrance of the Camino Real International Bridge in Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico, January 20, 2025. REUTERS/Cheney Orr
Shortly after the inauguration, U.S. border authorities said they had shut down outgoing President Joe Biden’s CBP One entry program, which had allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment on an app. Existing appointments were cancelled, leaving migrants stunned and unsure of what to do.
Trump, a Republican, recaptured the White House after promising to intensify border security and deport record numbers of migrants. Trump criticized Biden for high levels of illegal immigration during the Democrat’s presidency, but as Biden toughened his policies last year and Mexico stepped up enforcement, the number of migrants caught crossing illegally fell dramatically.
Republicans say large-scale deportations are necessary after millions of immigrants crossed illegally during Biden’s presidency. There were roughly 11 million immigrants in the U.S. illegally or with a temporary status at the start of 2022, according to a U.S. government estimate, a figure that some analysts now place at 13 million to 14 million.
“As commander-in-chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said in his inaugural address.
Trump’s critics and immigrant advocates say mass deportations could disrupt businesses, split families and cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a federal court filing on Monday that Trump’s decision to end the CBP One program removed the only avenue to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, an opening salvo by the civil rights group to fight Trump’s agenda in court.
Americans have grown less welcoming toward immigrants without legal status since Trump’s first presidency, but remain wary of harsh measures such as using detention camps, a Reuters/Ipsos poll in December found.
BIDEN ENTRY PROGRAM SHUT DOWN
In several Mexican border cities, migrants saw their appointments on Biden’s CBP One app canceled just after Trump took office. Some 280,000 people had been logging into the app daily to secure an appointment as of Jan. 7.
Migrants waiting in Ciudad Juarez scrambled to find short-term rentals, buy bus tickets and call family members back home.
Daynna del Valle, a 40-year-old Venezuelan, spent eight months in Mexico waiting for an appointment that would have arrived on Tuesday. In that time, she worked at a nail salon but earned so little that she barely managed to send any money back to her mother in Colombia, a cancer survivor who needed medical treatment for her blood pressure.
“I’m lost,” she said. “I don’t know what to do, where to go.”
Denia Mendez, a Honduran sitting in the courtyard of a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras – across from Eagle Pass, Texas – opened her email inbox 30 minutes after Trump became president. She stared at an email for several minutes, reading it over and over, before her eyes welled up.
“They canceled my appointment,” she said. Several other migrants, who just minutes ago were laughing as they fed potato chips to pigeons, huddled around her phone, their faces suddenly grave.
Mendez’s 15-year-old daughter Sofia kept trying to get into the CBP One app.
“They’re not going to let you into the app, baby,” her mother told her softly.
BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP TARGETED
In his order focused on so-called “birthright citizenship Trump called on U.S. agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children without at least one U.S. citizen or permanent resident parent, applying the restrictions in 30 days.
His order prompted the swift filing of a lawsuit in federal court in New Hampshire by the ACLU and other groups, who argued that Trump’s order violated the right for anyone born in the United States to be considered a citizen enshrined in the Citizenship Clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional — it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values,” Anthony Romero, the ACLU’s executive director, said in a statement.
In other orders, Trump suspended U.S. refugee resettlement for at least three months and ordered a review of security to see if travelers from certain nations should be subject to a travel ban.
The Republican president rolled back existing guidance for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers that prioritized serious criminals and broadened the scope of their enforcement, including targeting migrants with final deportation orders, a move that could help ramp up removals.
The nascent Trump administration took steps to gain control of the U.S. Justice Department immigration courts, firing four top immigration court officials, three sources familiar with the matter said.
Trump also kicked off a process to designate criminal cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and to utilize a 1798 law known as the Alien Enemies Act against foreign gang members.
-Reuters
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Donald Trump pardoned about 1,500 of his supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago as he moved swiftly to impose his will on the U.S. government just hours after reclaiming the presidency on Monday.
After a day of ceremony, Trump signed a series of executive actions to curb immigration and roll back environmental regulations and racial and gender diversity initiatives. He did not take immediate action to raise tariffs, a key campaign promise, but said he could impose 25% duties on Canada and Mexico on Feb. 1.
His decision to pardon supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, is sure to enrage police, lawmakers and others whose lives were put at risk during an unprecedented episode in modern U.S. history.
Roughly 140 police officers were assaulted during the attack, with some sprayed with chemical irritants and others struck with pipes, poles and other weapons. Four people died during the chaos, including a Trump supporter who was shot dead by police.
Trump ordered 14 leaders of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys militant groups, who were serving long prison sentences, released from prison early, but left their convictions intact.
Earlier in the day, Trump, 78, took the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda, where a mob of his supporters had rampaged on Jan. 6 in an unsuccessful attempt to reverse his 2020 loss to Joe Biden.
At the ceremony, Trump portrayed himself as a saviour chosen by God to rescue a faltering nation.
“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said.
Trump is the first president in more than a century to win a second term after losing the White House and the first felon to occupy the White House. The oldest president ever to be sworn in, he is backed by Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.
Trump moved quickly to clamp down on illegal immigration, a signature issue since he first entered politics in 2015.
Shortly after he took the oath of office, U.S. border authorities shut down a program that allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to enter the U.S. legally by scheduling an appointment through a smartphone. Existing appointments were canceled.
Nearly 1,660 Afghans who had been cleared by the U.S. government to resettle in the U.S., including family members of active-duty U.S. military personnel, were having their flights canceled under a Trump order suspending U.S. refugee programs, a U.S. official and a leading refugee resettlement advocate said on Monday.
BORDER EMERGENCY DECLARED, CLIMATE DEAL NIXED
At the White House, Trump signed an order that declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border, which would unlock funding and allow him to dispatch troops there. He signed an order that would end a policy that confers citizenship to those born in the United States, which is certain to trigger a lengthy court fight. Another executive order designated Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations.
Trump once again withdrew the United States from the Paris climate deal, removing the world’s biggest historic emitter from global efforts to fight climate change for the second time in a decade.
“We’re getting rid of all the cancer … caused by the Biden administration,” Trump said as he signed a stack of executive orders in the Oval Office.
His inauguration amounts to a triumphant return for a political disruptor who survived two assassination attempts and won the election despite a criminal conviction and a prosecution stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Other orders revoked Biden administration policies governing artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. He also imposed a freeze on federal hiring and ordered government workers to return to the office, rather than working from home. He also signed paperwork to create a “Department of Government Efficiency,” an outside advisory board headed by billionaire Elon Musk that aims to cut large swaths of government spending.
In the State Department, more than a dozen nonpartisan senior diplomats were asked to resign as part of a broader plan to replace nonpartisan civil servants with loyalists.
He also said he would issue orders to scrap federal diversity programs and require the government to recognize only genders assigned at birth.
While Trump sought to portray himself as a peacemaker and unifier during his half-hour speech, his tone was often sharply partisan. He repeated false claims from his campaign that other countries were emptying their prisons into America and voiced familiar grievances over his criminal prosecutions.
With Biden seated nearby, Trump issued a stinging indictment of his predecessor’s policies from immigration to foreign affairs.
“We have a government that has given unlimited funding to the defense of foreign borders, but refuses to defend American borders, or more importantly, its own people,” Trump said.
Numerous tech executives who have sought to curry favor with the incoming administration – including the three richest men in the world, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg – had prominent seats on stage, next to cabinet nominees and members of Trump’s family.
Trump said he would send astronauts to Mars, prompting Musk – who has long talked about colonizing the planet – to raise his fists.
Trump vowed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and repeated his intention to take back control of the Panama Canal, one of several foreign policy pronouncements that have caused consternation among U.S. allies.
RETURN TO POWER
Trump took the oath of office to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution at 12:01 p.m. ET (1701 GMT), administered by Chief Justice John Roberts. His vice president, JD Vance, was sworn in just before him.
Outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in November, was seated next to Biden in a section with former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, sat with her husband Bill. Obama’s wife, Michelle, chose not to attend.
The ceremony was moved indoors due to the extreme cold gripping much of the country.
Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration and has continued to claim falsely that the 2020 election he lost to Biden was rigged.
Biden, in one of his last official acts, pardoned several people whom Trump has threatened with retaliation, including General Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who Trump has suggested should be executed for holding back-channel talks with China. Milley’s portrait was removed from the Pentagon shortly after Trump’s inauguration.
He also pardoned five family members minutes before leaving office, citing fears that Trump would target them.
Reuters
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The United States will leave the World Health Organization, President Donald Trump said on Monday, saying the global health agency had mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and other international health crises.
Trump said the WHO had failed to act independently from the “inappropriate political influence of WHO member states” and required “unfairly onerous payments” from the U.S. that were disproportionate to the sums provided by other, larger countries, such as China.
“World Health ripped us off, everybody rips off the United States. It’s not going to happen anymore,” Trump said at the signing of an executive order on the withdrawal, shortly after his inauguration to a second term.
The WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When asked about Trump’s decision and remarks, China’s foreign ministry told a regular press briefing on Tuesday that the role of the WHO in global health governance should only be strengthened, not weakened.
“China will continue to support the WHO in fulfilling its responsibilities, and deepen international public health cooperation,” said Guo Jiakun, a ministry spokesperson.
The move means the U.S. will leave the United Nations health agency in 12 months’ time and stop all financial contributions to its work. The United States is by far the WHO’s biggest financial backer, contributing around 18% of its overall funding. WHO’s most recent two-year budget, for 2024-2025, was $6.8 billion.
The U.S. departure will likely put at risk programs across the organization, according to several experts both inside and outside the WHO, notably those tackling tuberculosis, the world’s biggest infectious disease killer, as well as HIV/AIDS and other health emergencies.
Trump’s order said the administration would cease negotiations on the WHO pandemic treaty while the withdrawal is in progress. U.S. government personnel working with the WHO will be recalled and reassigned, and the government will look for partners to take over necessary WHO activities, according to the order.
The government will review, rescind, and replace the 2024 U.S. Global Health Security Strategy as soon as practicable, the order said.
The next-largest donors to the WHO are the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, although most of that funding goes to polio eradication, and the global vaccine group Gavi, followed by the European Commission and the World Bank. The next-largest national donor is Germany, which contributes around 3% of the WHO’s funding.
Trump’s withdrawal from the WHO is not unexpected. He took steps to quit the body in 2020, during his first term as president, accusing the WHO of aiding China’s efforts to “mislead the world” about the origins of COVID.
WHO vigorously denies the allegation and says it continues to press Beijing to share data to determine whether COVID emerged from human contact with infected animals or due to research into similar viruses in a domestic laboratory.
Trump also suspended U.S. contributions to the agency, costing it nearly $200 million in 2020-2021 versus the previous two-year budgets, as it battled the world’s worst health emergency in a century.
Under U.S. law, leaving the WHO requires a one-year notice period, and the payment of any outstanding fees. Before the U.S. withdrawal could be completed last time, Joe Biden won the country’s presidential election and put a stop to it on his first day in office on Jan. 20, 2021.
-Reuters
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday rescinded sanctions imposed by the former Biden administration on far-right Israeli settler groups and individuals accused of being involved in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, the new White House website said.
The website said Trump rescinded Executive Order 14115 issued on Feb. 1, 2024, which authorized the imposition of certain sanctions “on Persons Undermining Peace,
Security, and Stability in the West Bank.”
Trump’s decision is a reversal of a major policy action by former President Joe Biden’s administration which had slapped sanctions on numerous Israeli settler individuals and entities, freezing their U.S. assets and generally barring Americans from dealing with them.
As much of the world’s attention has focused on the war in Gaza, growing violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in the West Bank and land grabs in the occupied territory have raised concern among some of Israel’s Western allies.
U.S. sanctions on settlers landed after the Biden administration repeatedly urged the Israeli government to take action to hold extremists to account for actions that Washington believes set back hopes for a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians.
Since the 1967 Middle East war, Israel has occupied the West Bank of the Jordan River, which Palestinians want as the core of an independent state. It has built Jewish settlements there that most countries deem illegal. Israel disputes this and cites historical and Biblical ties to the land.
Trump’s approach to settlements was significantly different. During his first term in 2019, Trump had abandoned the long-held U.S. position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by Biden.
Israel Ganz, chairman of the main Yesha settler council who has close ties with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters in October that he expected the sanctions to be lifted in the event of a Trump win.
-Reuters
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