Trump administration officials minutes after the new president took office on Monday shut down a mobile app for migrants to make appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border.
By shutting down the CBP One app, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials essentially canceled all outstanding appointments made by migrants without visas who sought to enter the United States through legal ports of entry.
The app shutdown is part of a series of moves by the incoming administration to crack down on the border, even as migration has decreased significantly in the past six months.
According to CBP numbers, U.S. officials encountered 96,048 foreign nationals at the border in December. About half, 48,722, presented at a port of entry to get formal admission into the United States.
Before November, the last full month with fewer than 100,000 encounters was January of 2021, the month when former President Biden was sworn in. That month, CBP encountered 78,414 people, only 3,098 of whom presented at ports of entry — the rest were encountered by the Border Patrol after crossing the border illegally.
CBP One was a key component of the Biden administration’s efforts to channel migrants through legal pathways to seek refuge in the United States.
President Trump is due to sign 10 executive orders on Monday related to the border, several of which seek to undo those pathways.
The actions are designed to essentially shut down the border and return to policies used during the first Trump administration, like the so-called remain in Mexico policy.
Under that policy, at the time known officially as the Migrant Protection Protocols, around 70,000 third-country nationals were returned to Mexico over the span of two years to await the results of their U.S. asylum cases.
