A wide-ranging series of steps that President Donald Trump has promised to take to beef up security at the southern border began taking effect soon after he was inaugurated Monday, making good on his defining political promise to crack down on immigration. Some of the moves revive policies from his first administration, including forcing asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, cracking down on asylum access and finishing the border wall. But others will mark sweeping new strategies, like an effort to end automatic citizenship for anyone born in America, pulling the military into border security and ending use of a Biden-era app used by nearly a million migrants to enter America. Actual execution of such a far-reaching immigration agenda, expected under several executive orders, is certain to face legal and logistical challenges. And few details have been released so far. But in a concrete sign of how the changes were already playing out, migrants who had appointments to enter the U.S. using the CBP One app saw them canceled minutes after Trump was sworn in, and Mexico agreed to allow people seeking U.S. asylum to remain south of the American border while their court cases play out. “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. 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 in which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech to thunderous applause. The CBP One app disappears The online lottery system gave appointments to 1,450 people a day at eight border crossings to enter on “parole,” which Joe Biden used more than any president. It was a critical piece of the Biden administration’s border strategy to create new immigration pathways while cracking down on people who enter illegally. Supporters say it brought order to a chaotic border. Critics say it was magnet for more people to come. By midday Monday, it was gone. A notice on the Customs and Border Protection website emphasized the app was no longer being used. Migrants who had scored coveted appointments weeks ago found them canceled. That includes Melanie Mendoza, 21, and her boyfriend. She said they left Venezuela over a year ago, spending more than $4,000 and traveling for a month, including walking for three days. “We don’t know what we are going to do,” she said in Tijuana, Mexico, just on the other side of the border from San Diego. Mexico agrees to take back migrants The Trump administration will reinstate its “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forced 70,000 asylum-seekers in his first term to wait there for hearings in U.S. immigration court. Mexico, a country integral to any American effort to limit illegal immigration, indicated Monday that it is prepared to receive asylum-seekers while emphasizing that there should be an online application allowing them to schedule appointments at the U.S. border. Immigration advocates say the policy put migrants at extreme risk in northern Mexico, where they were easily recognizable to cartels, who kidnapped them and extorted their families for money. “This is déjà vu of the darkest kind,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge. She said policies like “Remain in Mexico” have “exacerbated conditions at the border, stoked fear within U.S. communities, and undermined our global […]