The Trump administration has unveiled an overhauled cellphone app once used to let migrants apply for asylum, turning it into a system that allows people living illegally in the US to say they want to leave the country voluntarily.
The renamed app, announced Monday and now called CBP Home, is part of the administration’s campaign to encourage “self-deportations, ” touted as an easy and cost-effective way to nudge along President Donald Trump’s push to deport millions of immigrants without legal status.
“The app provides illegal aliens in the United States with a straightforward way to declare their intent to voluntarily depart, offering them the chance to leave before facing harsher consequences,” Pete Flores, the acting commissioner for USCustoms and Border Protection, said in a statement.
Moments after Trump took office, the earlier version of the app, CBP One, stopped allowing migrants to apply for asylum, and tens of thousands of border appointments were canceled.
More than 900,000 people were allowed in the country on immigration parole under CBP One, generally for two years, starting in January 2023.
The Trump administration has repeatedly urged migrants in the country illegally to leave.
“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on the social platform X. “If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”
Experts wondered how many people without legal status would register for what has long been known as “voluntary departure,” or what the government hopes to gain from the new app.
“I’m not sure what their intentions are,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, associate policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute. “But they’re creating a bit of a culture of fear around immigration right now,” from highly publicized ICE arrests to sending immigrants to a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. The new app, she said, could be part of that “targeted public relations campaign” to urge more people to leave the US
Some people living in the US illegally chose to leave even before Trump’s inauguration, though it’s unclear how many.
But earlier mass crackdowns on illegal immigration — most famously a quasi-military operation in the mid-1950s that Trump has repeatedly praised — also drove many immigrants who were in the US legally to leave.
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Homeland Security overhauls its asylum phone app. Now it’s for ‘self-deportation’
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Homeland Security overhauls its asylum phone app. Now it’s for ‘self-deportation’
- Moments after Trump took office, the earlier version of the app, CBP One, stopped allowing migrants to apply for asylum, and tens of thousands of border appointments were canceled
Explosion at US embassy in Oslo, no injuries: police
OSLO, Norway: Norwegian police reported on Sunday an explosion at the US embassy in the capital Oslo, but said there were no casualties.
The explosion occurred around 1:00 am local time (0000 GMT), the Oslo police department said in a statement, adding they did not know the cause of the blast.
Public broadcaster NRK quoted police incident commander Michael Dellemyr saying the blast hit the entrance of the embassy’s consular section.
“At around 1:00 am we received several reports of an explosion. We arrived shortly afterward and confirmed that there had been an explosion that hit the US embassy,” he told NRK.
“There is minor damage,” he said.
“We are not going to comment on anything related to the type of damage, what it is that has exploded and similar details, beyond the fact that there has been an explosion” because “it is very early in the investigation,” he said.
The police statement said investigators were in contact with the embassy about the incident and there was a huge police deployment on site.
Residents near the embassy said they heard a loud blast.
A 16-year-old identified only as Edvard told TV2 that he was watching television when he heard the blast.
“My mother and I first thought it came from our house so we looked around a little, but then we saw the flashing lights outside the window and a ton of police,” he said.
“There were police dogs and drones and police with automatic weapons and helicopters in the air,” he said.
US embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East over American military operations in Iran and several have faced attacks as Tehran hits back at industrial and diplomatic targets.
But police gave no indication the incident near the embassy in Oslo was connected to the conflict.
The explosion occurred around 1:00 am local time (0000 GMT), the Oslo police department said in a statement, adding they did not know the cause of the blast.
Public broadcaster NRK quoted police incident commander Michael Dellemyr saying the blast hit the entrance of the embassy’s consular section.
“At around 1:00 am we received several reports of an explosion. We arrived shortly afterward and confirmed that there had been an explosion that hit the US embassy,” he told NRK.
“There is minor damage,” he said.
“We are not going to comment on anything related to the type of damage, what it is that has exploded and similar details, beyond the fact that there has been an explosion” because “it is very early in the investigation,” he said.
The police statement said investigators were in contact with the embassy about the incident and there was a huge police deployment on site.
Residents near the embassy said they heard a loud blast.
A 16-year-old identified only as Edvard told TV2 that he was watching television when he heard the blast.
“My mother and I first thought it came from our house so we looked around a little, but then we saw the flashing lights outside the window and a ton of police,” he said.
“There were police dogs and drones and police with automatic weapons and helicopters in the air,” he said.
US embassies have been placed on high alert in the Middle East over American military operations in Iran and several have faced attacks as Tehran hits back at industrial and diplomatic targets.
But police gave no indication the incident near the embassy in Oslo was connected to the conflict.
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