President Donald Trump has unveiled strict new immigration and asylum restrictions just hours after taking office on Monday, announcing plans to deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and pursue efforts to end birthright citizenship.
Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border and used a careening press conference in the Oval Office to announce the controversial order seeking to revoke the right of US nationality to anyone born in America.
“That’s a big one,” he told reporters.
The move to reverse a right enshrined in the US 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 pushback.
Another executive order declared a national emergency on the US-Mexico border.
“I’m fine with legal immigration. I like it. We need people, and I’m absolutely fine with it. We want to have it,” he said.
“But we have to have legal immigration.”
Earlier, in his inaugural speech, he announced he would be sending troops to the US-Mexico border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.”
“All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” he said.
White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly announced earlier that the administration would end the practice of granting asylum.
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.
US media reported 30,000 people had appointments scheduled.
Trump’s key adviser and noted immigration hardliner Stephen Miller took to social media to announce that the doors were shut.
“All illegal aliens seeking entry into the United States should turn back now,” he wrote. “Anyone entering the United States without authorization faces prosecution and expulsion.”
Kelly said the administration would also reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy that prevailed under Trump’s first administration.
Under that rule, people who apply to enter the United States at the Mexican border were not allowed to do so until their application had been decided.
