MANY OF President Donald Trump's supporters animatedly insist that he opposes only illegal immigration, but gladly opens his arms to immigrants who enter the country lawfully.
It isn't true. Trump and his inner circle oppose all immigration, legal and illegal alike. During his first term as president, he oversaw more than 400 regulatory changes that slashed legal immigration in half.
Now he has picked up where he left off.
In Monday's inaugural address, Trump characteristically denounced "dangerous criminals ... that have illegally entered our country" and vowed to begin "returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came." The blizzard of executive orders he signed later that day did indeed begin a crackdown at the border. But the first people to feel the lash of Trump's new border polices are not "criminal aliens." They are law-abiding would-be migrants who have broken no rules.
![]() Hundreds of asylum-seekers were stranded at the border in Tijuana, Mexico, on 20 January 2025 when the new Trump administration abruptly shut down the US government app they had been using to schedule appointments requesting entry into the United States. |
One of Trump's orders indefinitely suspends the nation's refugee admissions program, an initiative that once enjoyed bipartisan support. The policy permits refugees fleeing persecution to come to the United States legally, assuming they pass multiple interviews, security vetting, and medical screenings. Among those thrown into limbo are hundreds of Afghan residents, who risked their lives to support US forces during the American mission and are now in hiding from the Taliban dictatorship.
Trump's ramped-up assault on lawful immigrants began even before any executive orders were signed. Within minutes of his inauguration, CBS News reported, officials shut down a phone app, CBP One, that enabled asylum-seekers in Mexico to schedule appointments requesting entry into the United States. On Monday afternoon, the app went dark; thousands of existing appointments were cancelled. Hopeful migrants, many of whom had waited for a year or more to schedule an appointment, had the rug pulled out from under them. For good measure, Trump also terminated the so-called CHNV Parole Program, an initiative that allowed a modest number of Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan citizens to live in the United States for up to two years if they had American sponsors.
Both CBP One and the CHNV process were designed to curtail illegal immigration by providing legal alternatives for crossing the border. To pull the plug on such programs would make no sense for a president who genuinely welcomed legal immigrants. It makes all the sense in the world, unfortunately, for the president we have now: a man whose deepest political passion is nativism and whose highest priority is keeping immigrants — all immigrants — out.
Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.
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