After President Donald Trump issued several executive orders related to border security on his first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security began implementing them the same day.
Trump was the first president in modern history to declare an invasion at a U.S. border, The Center Square reported. His invasion proclamation suspends entry into the U.S. and directs several federal agencies to “repel the invasion.”
On the same day, Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman issued two directives “essential to ending the invasion of the U.S. southern border and empower law enforcement to protect Americans.”
The first rescinded guidelines issued by former DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas prohibiting Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection officers from arresting illegal border crossers in “protected areas.”
In October 2021, Mayorkas issued a sweeping policy directive instructing ICE and CBP officers to avoid “protected areas” when making arrests. Doing so would “restrain people’s access to essential services or engagement in essential activities,” he argued.
Mayorkas identified “protected areas” as medical or healthcare facilities, public schools, including K-12 and colleges, places of worship, playgrounds and recreational areas, social service entities like food banks or shelters, public areas where parades or demonstrations are held, among many others.
The directive empowers “the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens – including murderers and rapists – who have illegally come into our country,” DHS said in a statement. “Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest. The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.”
The second directive ends “the broad abuse of humanitarian parole” also implemented by Mayorkas, returning the process to a case-by-case basis as stipulated by federal immigration law. ICE and CBP are also in the process of phasing out all parole programs that aren’t in accordance with federal law, DHS says.
They will likely include more than a dozen Mayorkas created that were identified by U.S. House Republicans as illegal, which they and others argued ushered in millions of foreign nationals deemed inadmissible under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
One of them, a CBP One app, was terminated within minutes of Trump being sworn into office, The Center Square reported.
“The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country,” DHS said. “This was all stopped on day one of the Trump Administration. This action will return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis.”
On Tuesday, DHS next announced it was immediately reinstating Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, officially known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
Trump first instituted the MPP on Jan. 25, 2019, through a DHS policy guidance issued under the authority of the INA. The guidance directed certain individuals applying to enter the U.S. to wait in the adjoining country from which they arrived pending the completion of removal proceedings in accordance with federal law.
After the Biden administration attempted to suspend or end it, Texas and Missouri sued. A federal judge ruled that ending the MPP was unlawful, The Center Square reported. Seven months after that ruling, the Department of Justice dismissed the federal government’s appeal, claiming it would keep the MPP policy in effect although it didn’t.
The actions will support border czar Tom Homan’s mass deportation operation that is underway in which so-called sanctuary jurisdictions are being targeted. The massive effort is in response to more than 14 million illegal border crossers reported under the Biden administration and millions already on the ICE docket for removal still freely living in the U.S., including violent criminals, The Center Square reported.
