Trump DHS Nominee Vows to Shut Down App Crucial For Migrants to Legally Enter US

President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be the next Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem, promised to shut down on her first day in office CBP One, an app used by migrants to legally request asylum from outside the U.S.

She made the promise when answering a question from Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who called the app "concierge service for illegals," and said it allowed them to "apply ahead of time using their phone but not provide evidence that they need asylum."

Hawley went on to cite a "press report" detailing that migrants are often released into the country "without parole and sometimes never given a hearing." "The inspector general did a full investigation and found that users were frequently claiming the same address as their intended destination even though they were not connected. Will you end it? Hawley asked.

"I will shut down CBP One on day one. There is data and information we will preserve so we know who is coming into the country and who is already there and we need to go find," Noem answered.

The nominee was echoing a pledge from President-elect Trump, who said during the campaign that he would terminate the app, which he dubbed the "Kamala phone app for smuggling illegals (CBP One App).

CBP One app has been used by hundreds of thousands of asylum-seekers to enter the U.S. through a port of entry. The app allocates a certain amount of appointments per day and allows seekers to approach the border legally to make their requests. Appointments are allocated randomly with migrants who have been waiting the longest prioritized.

The government recently expanded the area from where migrants can access its CBP One app, allowing non-Mexicans to request asylum appointments from the states of Tabasco and Chiapas in addition to Northern and Central Mexico.

The app has also been criticized by an internal DHS watchdog through a report titled "CBP Did Not Thoroughly Plan for CBP One Risks, and Opportunities to Implement Improvements Exist."

"Although CBP uses biographic and biometric information submitted to CBP One to determine whether arriving noncitizens have derogatory records, it does not leverage the information to identify suspicious trends as part of its pre-arrival vetting procedures," the report claimed.

It also pointed out that the app cannot properly check the information of migrants, who claim a U.S. address as their intended destination, and stated that CBP lacks a system to regularly analyze data from the app across different points of entry. Such analysis could provide valuable information to help CBP officers during their interviews with migrants.Cartels have also been accused of using CBP One to track, kidnap and extort migrants.