1-22-25

The American Dream has been revoked.

True to his promises, within hours of being sworn in (which he did without putting his hand on a Bible) Trump eliminated the legal process that most asylum seekers use to seek safety in our country.

For many decades, people from other countries have had a legal right to show up at our border and ask for asylum. During the first Trump administration, a combination of policies were put in place to keep them from doing this. In an attempt to resume the legal process in an orderly manner, the Biden administration created a cellphone app called CBP One. They required migrants to use it to schedule appointments for making their asylum requests. Only a limited number of appointments were available each day, so migrants would try to make appointments when new ones opened up each day. Typically the migrants have had to wait months to get an appointment, and if they were lucky enough to get one, they had to wait months more to show up for their appointments. Most of the migrants waited in Mexico, where they were vulnerable to abuses by both criminal gangs and corrupt government officials.

Trump has just disabled the app, so it is no longer possible to ask for an appointment. Additionally, he has canceled all the outstanding appointments that people waited months to get, leaving them stranded. We are told that tens of thousands of migrants' appointments were canceled today. They no longer have any reason to hope that they will be able to enter our country legally.

Historically, when our government has made it difficult for people to come legally, the people who are truly desperate try to come illegally. Sometimes they succeed. Sometimes they die in rivers and deserts. The harder we make it for people to come, the more money coyotes make helping them get here, and more money becomes available to bribe our border patrol agents to turn a blind eye and let them cross. This dynamic of an increasing number of illegal entries and increasing corruption that both result from the decreasing opportunities for legal entry occurs all across the world, not just in our country. Historically, the corruption does not stop at the border. Corruption in one area of government leads to corruption in other areas.

So, what has Trump accomplished this first day back in office? He has sent a signal to the world that the United States of America's new policy is that we will let people suffer and die, rather than let them come into our country legally. He has shown governments of other countries that we cannot be trusted to uphold the agreements prior U.S. administrations negotiated with them. He has told the migrants who had their appointments canceled that we are no longer keeping the promises we made to them. Trump has instituted changes that will result in more government corruption, which will make our country more safe for criminals and less safe for the rest of us, regardless of how far we live from a border. At some point, Trump will have to tell his supporters that they will have to change their rhetoric, because they can no longer say they welcome asylum seekers who come legally. It is now nearly impossible for the vast majority of migrants to legally claim asylum.

Within hours of taking the oath of office, Trump demonstrated that his new administration will indeed be just as horrible as half the country expected. Now we wonder whether the Trump half will ever understand or care.