Washington DC:
President Donald Trump announced severe new restrictions on immigration and asylum in the United States just hours after taking office Monday, saying he will send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and try to end birthright rights.
Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and used a worrying press conference in the Oval Office to announce the controversial order aimed at revoking the right to U.S. citizenship for anyone born in America.
“That’s a big one,” he told reporters.
The move to undo a right enshrined in the U.S. Constitution will face stiff legal challenges, an inevitability the president acknowledged.
“I think we have good grounds, but you could be right,” he said when asked about the backlash.
Another executive order declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I’m fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people, and I’m absolutely fine with it. We want it,” he said.
“But we need to have legal immigration.”
Earlier, in his inaugural address, he announced he would send troops to the U.S.-Mexico border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
“Any illegal entry will be stopped immediately and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens to the places they came from,” he said.
White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly previously announced that the administration would end the practice of granting asylum.
Appointments cancelled
The first effects of Trump’s stance became apparent minutes after his inauguration when an app unveiled under President Joe Biden to help process asylum seekers went offline.
American media reported that 30,000 people had scheduled appointments.
Trump’s top adviser and well-known immigration hardliner Stephen Miller announced on social media that the doors were closed.
“All illegal aliens seeking to enter the United States must return now,” he wrote.
“Anyone who enters the United States without authorization will be prosecuted and deported.”
Kelly said the administration would also reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy that was in place under Trump’s first administration.
Under that rule, people who applied to enter the United States at the Mexican border were not allowed to do so until their application had been decided.
There was despair at the US-Mexico border.
“Now that we are here, please let us in,” said Yaime Perez, a 27-year-old Cuban.
“Please, after all the work we have done to get here, let us enter your country so that we can better ourselves in life and be someone,” she said.
Challenges in court
Kelly said Trump would seek to use the death penalty against noncitizens who commit capital crimes, including murder.
“This is about national security. This is about public safety, and this is about the victims of some of the most violent and abusive criminals we have seen enter our country in our lifetimes, and it ends today,” she said.
Many of Trump’s first-term executive actions were rescinded under Biden, including one using so-called Title 42, which was implemented during the Covid pandemic, preventing virtually all entry into the country for public health reasons.
The changes under Biden led to an influx of migrants, with images of thousands of people packing the border area.
Trump regularly invoked dark images of how illegal migration was “poisoning the blood of the nation,” words seized upon by opponents as reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Analysts say any attempt to change birthright will be fraught.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said the 14th Amendment was “crystal clear” in granting citizenship to anyone born in the United States, with the exception of children of foreign diplomats.
“We have had the birthright for centuries, and a president cannot take it away with an executive order,” he told AFP. “We expect quick trials.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)