Trump Signs Additional Immigration Orders on Third Day in Office, Enforcement Details Still Unclear

 President Donald Trump signed additional executive orders focused on further tightening control over the southern border, though the specifics on how migrants would be prevented from crossing remain vague.

Jan. 23, 2025, 5:27 AM GMT+6

On his third day in office, President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders aimed at tightening U.S. immigration policies, specifically targeting the southern border and increasing deportations. However, as of Wednesday afternoon, large-scale deportation raids had not yet been carried out.

A fact sheet from the White House outlined that Trump signed an executive order suspending the physical entry of individuals involved in what the administration called an "invasion" through the southern border. The order mandates that the Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and State take immediate action to "repel, repatriate, and remove illegal aliens" along the southern border.

Details on how the administration plans to block migrants from crossing the border remain vague.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt appeared on Fox News, stating that Trump was using all of his executive powers to secure the nation’s borders. She clarified that “ports of entry” would remain open for asylum seekers, implying that individuals could still apply to enter the U.S. at official points of entry.

However, soon after Trump’s inauguration, the CBP One app, previously used by migrants to schedule appointments at southern border ports, stopped functioning for this purpose. Migrants with existing appointments saw them canceled, according to a Customs and Border Protection statement released Monday.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration also published a notice in the federal register expanding the use of “expedited removal” — a process that allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deport migrants without going through formal immigration court proceedings. The expansion means that any undocumented immigrant who has crossed the border within the past two years could be subject to deportation, regardless of where they are found in the country. This new measure bypasses immigration courts, which are currently burdened by a backlog of 3 million cases.

In a related move, the Trump administration dismissed four senior officials from the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees the nation’s immigration courts. These officials had decades of experience in managing the overburdened system.

As of Wednesday evening, however, deportation numbers did not appear to have drastically changed. Border czar Tom Homan stated that ICE agents had arrested 308 migrants in the past 24 hours. For comparison, ICE arrested an average of 282 migrants per day in September, the most recent month for which data is available. A source familiar with the arrests indicated that they were part of routine operations.