Trump's Immigration Crackdown

At the 82nd D-Day anniversary in Normandy, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth linked immigration to the landings' legacy, warning European nations of an 'invasion' of dangerous ideologies arriving via Mediterranean beaches and specifically naming entry points in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria. Hegseth skipped the main international ceremony, attending only the US cemetery event, while residents of Langrune-sur-Mer protested his visit as 'warlike' and anti-democratic. His remarks echoed VP Vance's earlier blaming of a UK stabbing on migrant 'invasion,' which Downing Street had criticized as divisive. French PM Lecornu responded by calling for European defense autonomy.

The State Department under Secretary Marco Rubio approved a directive cutting the number of embassies and consulates in Africa that process visas from about 50 to 20, covering both immigrant and non-immigrant visas, with the change expected to take effect within the month. Citizens of non-hub countries will have to travel to one of 20 approved sites, incurring significant cost and difficulty, while non-hub consular sections keep only limited services such as passport renewals and emergency assistance. The cut is part of the broader immigration crackdown and compounds the new rule forcing green-card applicants to apply from abroad.

ICE published a request for information seeking input on how commercial adtech data — including location, browsing and social-media activity — could support immigration investigations, alarming industry insiders and privacy advocates who warn of a growing surveillance web. Lawmakers proposed bills requiring warrants for such data purchases, but both stalled in Congress, and ICE did not disclose how many companies responded by the February 2 deadline. Industry groups urged regulators to declare it unlawful to sell data for law-enforcement use under state privacy regulations. The move runs alongside ICE and CBP's parallel scale-up of facial recognition.

Following Trump's return to office, the CBP One app that had let migrants legally schedule US asylum appointments was shut down on January 20, 2025, turning Tijuana — Mexico's main border crossing — into a dead-end where migrants are stranded or deported back into the city. Tijuana remains one of the world's most dangerous cities even as it becomes a site of intense local solidarity. In a pointed juxtaposition, Iran's national football team will be based in Tijuana for the upcoming World Cup. The closure sealed the legal asylum pathway that had channeled arrivals through the app.

Haitian and other immigrant communities expressed fear of ICE detention and deportation during the 2026 World Cup, with reports of aggressive ICE tactics — including the shooting of two American demonstrators in Minneapolis — fueling alarm among fans, players and journalists. More than 120 civil-rights organizations issued a travel advisory, and a Human Rights Watch report documented an asylum-seeker arrested and deported after attending the Club World Cup final. DHS maintained that legal visitors have nothing to worry about. The episode shows interior enforcement colliding with a flagship global event.

About 300 detainees at the Delaney Hall migrant detention center in Newark, New Jersey began a hunger strike protesting rotten food, denied medical care and unsafe water, prompting Senator Andy Kim and Representative Robert Menendez Jr. to visit the facility. Both lawmakers, along with Governor Mikie Sherrill, demanded the center's closure, with Sherrill citing unconstitutional treatment. The Department of Homeland Security denied that any strike was occurring. The episode put expanded detention capacity — a pillar of the interior crackdown — under direct congressional scrutiny.

Refugees fleeing persecution from Haiti, Tibet and India are being rejected at the Canadian border and handed to US ICE for detention, as Canada applies the Safe Third Country Agreement rigidly alongside new restrictive asylum legislation. Lawyers and advocates argue the practice violates human rights and undermines Canada's reputation as a safe haven, noting the US should not qualify as a safe third country given its long-term detention practices and threats of deportation to dangerous countries. The shift aligns a traditionally welcoming ally with the US crackdown rather than offering an outlet.

USCIS announced a sweeping policy change on May 22, 2026 requiring most foreigners in the US on temporary visas — work, tourism or study — to return to their home countries to apply for green cards, except in extraordinary circumstances, ending the common path of adjusting status from within the US. Immigration lawyers and aid groups warned it could force applicants to leave families and jobs for months and may be impossible for people without safe home countries or functioning US embassies. The rule lands alongside the African visa-post cuts that shrink the very consulates applicants would now have to use.

The Trump administration temporarily reassigned immigration lawyers from US Citizenship and Immigration Services to US attorneys' offices specifically to speed efforts to strip citizenship from naturalized Americans. The Justice Department has shortlisted 385 individuals for potential denaturalization charges and filed 35 cases since the start of the second term, despite the high legal burden of proof such cases require. Officials framed the drive as targeting fraud in the legal immigration system. The staffing move is the bureaucratic engine behind the broader denaturalization push that escalates in June.

CBP and ICE are scaling facial recognition as a primary enforcement tool: CBP's Traveler Verification Service has processed more than 939 million travelers and identified over 2,284 impostors, while ICE field agents use the Mobile Fortify smartphone app to compare photos against more than 200 million federal database images. The technology is deployed at all international airports, 63 other airports, 39 seaports and every pedestrian lane at the northern and southern borders. The ACLU and other critics flag privacy, accuracy and racial-disparity risks; proponents cite national-security gains. The build-out runs in parallel to ICE's separate move to buy commercial adtech data.

President Trump signed an executive order directing the Treasury Department to issue advisories to financial institutions on red flags for identifying customers living in the US illegally, naming payroll-tax evasion and the use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) as triggers. The order stops short of requiring banks to collect citizenship data — a proposal that drew industry pushback — but directs changes to the Bank Secrecy Act to strengthen customer due diligence. Because ITINs are used by millions of tax-paying immigrants, including DACA recipients and Temporary Protected Status holders, the order pulls the banking system into immigration screening. It is part of the administration's broader interior-enforcement build-out.