Trump Admin Repurposes App Used By Migrants To Request Asylum To Track Them Down And Deport Them

The Trump administration is using an app from which migrants requested asylum during the Biden administration to get their data and track them down for deportation.

Concretely, the CBP One app will now be called CBP Home. According to Fox News' Bill Melugin, migrants who have the app will see it auto update, allowing Department of Homeland Security authorities to track them down.

The app will also allow migrants to register to self deport. "They fill out biographical information, including their countries of citizenship, which country they plan to return to, their alien registration numbers, contact information, and it allows them to upload photos of themselves to confirm their identity. All of it is then submitted to CBP, and they leave the country," Melugin detailed.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted that those who self-deport will still "have the opportunity to return legally in the future." "If they don't, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return," she added.

Immigration restriction advocates support the self-deportation theory, which is closely tied to conservative policy proposals that aim to complicate the lives of undocumented citizens living in the country in order to get them to live—such as taking away access to public education for undocumented children and checking for identification documents during routine encounters with the public.

According to Ira Mehlam, spokesman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, immigrants are rational actors who will leave if the risks outweigh the benefits. "[Undocumented immigrants] are very rational people. You have to convince people who come on their own to leave on their own," he said.

That premise is put into question by a collection of studies cited by the American Immigration Council (AIC), which show that undocumented immigrants usually have a lot more to lose by self-deporting, including homes, jobs, and families. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, more than one-third of all undocumented immigrants own a home in the United States.

While self-deportation numbers are difficult to obtain, the American Immigration Council (AIC) claims such cases are rare. To back its claim, it cited studies analyzing immigration populations in states with a history of strong enforcement laws such as Arizona, Alabama, and Oklahoma. "The immigrant population in these states has remained in place and the predicted exodus never materialized," reads a passage of one of the studies.

Donald Trump discontinued CBP One on his first day in office, cancelling all existing appointments that had been given. According to Mexican officials, more than 30,000 migrants got stranded across the territory as a result.

However, those impacted by the measure are the ones who did get an appointment and were likely released after requesting asylum. The app granted 1,450 appointments daily.