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.
Homeland Security overhauls its asylum phone app. Now it’s for ‘self-deportation’
https://arab.news/meqjy
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
Trump administration labels 3 Muslim Brotherhood branches as terrorist organizations
- The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization
- “These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence,” Rubio said
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump’s administration has made good on its pledge to label three Middle Eastern branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations, imposing sanctions on them and their members in a decision that could have implications for US relationships with allies Qatar and Turkiye.
The Treasury and State departments announced the actions Tuesday against the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they said pose a risk to the United States and American interests.
The State Department designated the Lebanese branch a foreign terrorist organization, the most severe of the labels, which makes it a criminal offense to provide material support to the group. The Jordanian and Egyptian branches were listed by Treasury as specially designated global terrorists for providing support to Hamas.
“These designations reflect the opening actions of an ongoing, sustained effort to thwart Muslim Brotherhood chapters’ violence and destabilization wherever it occurs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement. “The United States will use all available tools to deprive these Muslim Brotherhood chapters of the resources to engage in or support terrorism.”
Rubio and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent were mandated last year under an executive order signed by Trump to determine the most appropriate way to impose sanctions on the groups, which US officials say engage in or support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm the United States and other regions.
Muslim Brotherhood leaders have said they renounce violence.
Trump’s executive order had singled out the chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, noting that a wing of the Lebanese chapter had launched rockets on Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel that set off the war in Gaza. Leaders of the group in Jordan have provided support to Hamas, the order said.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 but was banned in that country in 2013. Jordan announced a sweeping ban on the Muslim Brotherhood in April.
Nathan Brown, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, said some allies of the US, including the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, would likely be pleased with the designation.
“For other governments where the brotherhood is tolerated, it would be a thorn in bilateral relations,” including in Qatar and Turkiye, he said.
Brown also said a designation on the chapters may have effects on visa and asylum claims for people entering not just the US but also Western European countries and Canada.
“I think this would give immigration officials a stronger basis for suspicion, and it might make courts less likely to question any kind of official action against Brotherhood members who are seeking to stay in this country, seeking political asylum,” he said.
Trump, a Republican, weighed whether to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization in 2019 during his first term in office. Some prominent Trump supporters, including right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, have pushed his administration to take aggressive action against the group.
Two Republican-led state governments — Florida and Texas — designated the group as a terrorist organization this year.
