CBP Home, a CBP One App Reboot and the Weaponization of ICE
Detaining travelers and protesters, revoking Ukrainian refugees’ status, and the CBP Home app highlight the administration’s inhumanity
On Monday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the relaunch of the CBP One App under a new name, CBP Home. The CBP One app boasted many features. One feature was meant to allow migrants to submit required information and provide an avenue to apply for asylum legally through a port of entry (POE). That scheduling feature was introduced under former President Biden and was shut down on President Trump’s first day in office.
Despite providing an avenue to enter the U.S. the “legal way,” conservatives hate the CBP One app, as it was subject to tons of misinformation. However, the app relaunch adds a new self-deport feature and no longer allows migrants to seek legal entry into the United States. The CBP One app will update to the CBP Home app using the data gathered on asylum-seekers to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track them for deportation.
“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. If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return,”
In addition to the self-deport feature, the app will allow people to apply for and pay for an I-94 travel visa up to seven days before arriving in the United States, check wait times at the border, request inspections for perishable cargo, and allow bus operators to submit manifests.
Weaponizing ICE
While ICE and other federal agencies partnered with them have been weaponized against Latinos through racial profiling, they are now seemingly being employed to target people speaking out against genocide in Palestine. Over the weekend, Drop Site News and Zeteo published stories about DHS targeting a recent graduate from Columbia University for helping lead the Gaza solidarity encampment.
Mahmoud Khalil is legally in the U.S. and is a permanent resident (green card holder). DHS agents allegedly told him and those around him that his visa had been revoked. When the agents were informed of Khalil’s status and that he is a green card holder, they claimed the State Department revoked his green card too.
In a separate incident, DHS attempted to take in a Columbia University student but were prevented from doing so. Agents were denied access to the university-owned property last week because they did not have a warrant. Khalil and other students were the target of many pro-Israeli groups and this move is meant to have a chilling effect on those who protest as noted by the administration’s comments.
According to the Associated Press, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Khalil’s arrest was “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism,” as she linked anti-genocide protests with supporting Hamas by saying, Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.”
Trump and those around him continue to drive this wholly unconstitutional action. Trump himself took to social media emphasizing not just that they took Khalil into custody because of false claims of antisemitism (which are linked to Islamophobia), but that they also intend to target more protesters and deport them for speaking out against the mass slaughter of Palestinians.
“Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!”
Quite vocal about weaponizing federal agencies, aren’t they?
Traveler Difficulties
The recent detentions of travelers are starting to draw criticism. A German artist was detained in February in what she said was “like a horror movie,” and now, a UK publisher has been held at the Canadian border due to some confusion over their paperwork. These detentions, among at least one more, are raising questions about traveling to the U.S.
“This is the third prominent case of CBP and ICE getting unusually and unnecessarily aggressive with foreign tourists, refusing to take the common sense approach which would let them just withdraw their applications for admission and go home. May be because of Trump’s crackdown,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on X.
Meanwhile, Mexico has expanded the requirement to "register your entry into Mexico" by filling out an electronic form. It’s not a new process, but it is being more strictly enforced, thus creating headaches for unaware U.S. travelers headed to Mexico.
Analysis
The Trump administration has been busy with its anti-immigrant quest. There’s no doubt the Stephen Millers in Trump’s orbit are salivating at making life as difficult as possible for nonwhite people, in this case, Latino and Caribbean Island immigrants. If anyone made it clear that’s primarily who they were to be targeting, it’s that guy.
In some cases, the administration’s extreme measures are impacting white immigrants too. It was inevitable that the administration would move to revoke the legal status of Ukrainian refugees after it sought to revoke the legal status of hundreds of thousands of nonwhite refugees, including Haitians and Venezuelans. Add the traveler detentions of Europeans at the borders and it’s clear that the administration is doing much more harm than good.
All of this as Republicans introduced nine new anti-immigrant bills that are mostly centered around using biometric technologies, artificial intelligence, and drones to increase enforcement efforts at the U.S.-Mexico border. Some of the other legislation attempts to secure funding for measures like the Laken Riley Act, which remains an unfunded effort.
Meanwhile, and in a sign of increasing paranoia, DHS is performing polygraph tests on employees to try and find leakers as its highest-ranking officials continue to voice frustration about information detailing upcoming ICE raids being made public.
Things are getting intense.
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