Washington [US], April 30: U.S. President Donald Trump signed three consecutive executive orders to tighten immigration controls, despite tensions with courts and local governments.
The New York Times reported on April 29 that US President Donald Trump has just signed three executive orders to tighten immigration control, in the context that he continues to fulfill his campaign promises. The decrees were signed on April 28 (local time), a day before his second term turns 100 days. The first order directs Justice Minister Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Minister Kristi Noem to take the necessary measures to control immigrants in "sanctuary cities", referring to localities with soft policies on immigrants. The second decree relates to strengthening the legal protection of law enforcement forces. Finally, there is an ordinance aimed at tightening the English language proficiency requirement for truck drivers.
Overcrowded prisons
On the day Trump signed the executive orders, the White House praised the early results of the immigration control campaign. The campus at the White House displays photos of 100 illegal immigrants. White House immigration chief Tom Homan said "we have the safest border in the nation's history, and the numbers prove it." The U.S. Border Patrol arrested 7,200 people crossing the border illegally in March, the lowest level since 2000 and down from a peak of 250,000 cases in December 2023.
In the first 100 days of his term, Trump has stripped hundreds of thousands of people of their legal immigration status, increasing the number of people who are likely to be deported. The number of illegal immigrants arrested in the United States has skyrocketed, while the number of deportations has remained low, leading to overcrowded detention centers. According to Reuters, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities held about 48,000 people at the beginning of April, exceeding the designed capacity of 41,500.
Homan said the Fort Bliss military base in Texas could be ready to detain immigrants "in the very near future." The U.S. government also uses a naval base in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) to detain illegal immigrants.
Stress about "shelter"
Trump criticized states and cities for not cooperating with federal forces on immigration, calling them "shelters" and blaming them for releasing offenders instead of coordinating transfers to ICE. His first executive said that some local officials were waging an "unlawful rebellion against the sovereignty of federal law" by obstructing the enforcement of immigration laws.
In March, the mayors of four cities of Boston (Massachusetts, Chicago (Illinois), Denver (Colorado) and New York (New York) were questioned about immigration policy during a tense hearing in Congress. However, courts in many places protect the legality of relevant local laws. Federal Judge William H. Orrick in San Francisco (California) on April 24 approved a lawsuit filed by 16 U.S. city and county governments, ruling that the Trump administration should not be allowed to cut off federal aid to localities that provide limited protection to undocumented immigrants.
Tensions over immigration also led to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on April 18 arresting Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, on charges of obstructing the arrest of an illegal immigrant by a federal agency. Dugan was later released and is expected to be arraigned on May 15. Many people have protested in a federal court in Wisconsin against the federal government's moves against the judge.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
