Trump Said He’s Pro Legal Immigration, His Policies Say Otherwise, By Maria Ramirez
During the first year of his second term, Trump has terminated programs that let people legally live in the U.S., limited legal ways to get here, barred people from certain countries from entering the U.S. and paused processing of certain applications for visas and immigration statuses for legal permanent residency.
The administration's actions "will lead to the largest restriction in legal immigration—setting aside 2020—since the 1920s," David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, wrote in December. Bier cited 2020 when the global COVID-19 pandemic restricted migration.
As part of this, he ended the CBP One app that let people make appointments at official ports of entry to begin requesting asylum and cancelled 30,000 pending appointments. Under U.S. law, people are allowed to apply for asylum if they fear persecution in their home countries. To apply, people must be on U.S. soil.
The Department of Homeland Security has also tried to end several countries' Temporary Protected Status, which allows people from certain countries experiencing war, environmental disasters and epidemics to temporarily live and work in the U.S. Several terminations are being challenged in court and are paused while the cases are pending.
Ending humanitarian parole and TPS could affect about 2.5 million people currently legally in the U.S., Bier wrote.
"Over the next three years, 400,000 legal immigrants and nearly 1 million tourists, business travellers, international students, foreign workers, and other temporary visitors will face this ban," according to a Cato Institute analysis.
Alongside the travel ban, the State Department on Jan. 21 paused issuing non-tourist visas for people from 75 countries. And U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has paused processing immigration applications from 39 countries, including for asylum, permanent residency and citizenship.
Nearly half of the world's countries, more than 90, have some form of immigration restriction.
Trump has nearly entirely halted the U.S. refugee program. On his first day in office, he enacted an indefinite pause on refugee resettlement. In the weeks that followed, he cancelled travel for people who had already been granted the status.
Trump set the fiscal year 2026 refugee resettlement cap at 7,500, a record low. In fiscal year 2024, Biden's last year in office, the U.S. resettled 100,000 refugees.
https://www.amren.com/news/2026/03/trump-said-hes-pro-legal-immigration-his-policies-say-otherwise/
