How Trump is intensifying his crackdown on every form of immigration to the US

By Michael Williams, Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

(CNN) — President Donald Trump’s latest immigration crackdown, prompted by the shooting of two National Guard members, means he has now halted or significantly tightened every legal and illegal form of foreign entry into the US, prompting widespread fear and confusion among immigrants who are unsure what will happen to their pending cases.

Trump’s mass deportation campaign has garnered attention for its heavy-handed arrest tactics of undocumented immigrants nationwide. But the administration’s steady drumbeat of incremental changes to the US immigration system has also been disruptive — gumming up an already-arduous process for millions of people.

In the days since two National Guard members were shot in DC, allegedly by an Afghan migrant, the administration has announced a handful of policy shifts, including a pause on asylum decisions, a review of cases under the Biden administration and a “reexamination” of certain green-card holders, that have wide ramifications for immigrants residing in the US.

“We’re going back on all of these folks that have applied for asylum, people that would be traveling to this country, and looking at more information, what their social media platforms, they may have visited, the communications that they have, biometric information and data that we can collect from them, but also from their government too,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday.

As part of that push, Noem is recommending that Trump’s travel ban list expand to include between 30 to 32 countries, an increase from the current list of 19 countries, according to a source familiar with the matter. Adding to the confusion for future travelers, it’s unclear which countries are being added to the list — and when they’ll be announced.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services on Tuesday also paused, effective immediately, immigration applications for individuals from the current 19 countries, according to a policy memo.

The administration has frequently cited national security concerns to push forward its immigration agenda and roll out restrictions.

Trump administration officials and immigration hardliners have argued that doing so is necessary to fix parts of the system that, they say, have been exploited by immigrants coming into the country, or those already residing in the US. But immigration attorneys and advocates say the fits and starts and tightening of rules has slowed down an already-cumbersome system.

“It’s hard to predict and advise our clients on how to navigate this system,” said Jeff Joseph, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

“Imagine walking in a house of mirrors blindfolded. You never know, ‘Is this a wall that I’m walking into, is there a corner, is there a way to pivot?’ It’s hard to give advice when every Friday there’s a new announcement from the executive or a tweet with policy changes that are unpredictable,” he added.

Those changes have often been challenged in court, creating more chaos and confusion for the people navigating the system. Some immigration attorneys have advised clients to sit and wait amid the frequent whiplash and fears of being detained at routine check ins or immigration hearings. Other immigrants, meanwhile, have chosen to voluntarily depart.

At times, those legal challenges have been indicative of the limitations the executive has in overhauling the US immigration system.

“You have lots of control over specific levers of what happens, and you can make drastic changes in policy, but you can’t wholesale change the system itself without Congress enacting legislation. I think that still holds true,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan thinktank, referring to the executive branch.

Border essentially closed

For much of the first three years of President Joe Biden’s administration, the southern border was overwhelmed by the number of migrants seeking to cross into the United States, driven by a combination of the COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters and worsening economic conditions in Latin America.

In the final year of Biden’s presidency, his administration implemented restrictions along the US-Mexico border that, Homeland Security officials said, drove down border crossings.

But stopping the flow of people, which Trump has repeatedly referred to as an “invasion,” remained a central tenet of his successful presidential campaign, and within hours of being sworn in for his second term, his administration took steps that effectively sought to shutter asylum at the southern border. Last month, the Supreme Court announced it would review Trump’s policy of turning away asylum seekers at the border.

Trump signed an executive action that declared an emergency at the border, prompting the deployment of additional military personnel to assist with logistical and bureaucratic tasks and finish Trump’s long-promised border wall.

In March, US Customs and Border Protection awarded the first border wall contract during Trump’s second term, giving a construction company more than $70 million to construct about seven miles of barrier in southern Texas.

The Trump administration has said these actions have contributed to a significant drop in crossings, claiming a significant drop in migrant border crossings in the first 100 days of his second term.

Asylum cases stopped

Following the shooting of members of the National Guard in Washington last week, USCIS announced it was halting all asylum decisions until “we can ensure that every alien is vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible.”

There were more than 2.2 million immigrants waiting for asylum decisions or hearings as at end August 2025, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

DHS also said it was reviewing all asylum decisions made during Biden’s term following the shooting. The halt means that asylum seekers who might already have waited years for their cases to be resolved now face an even more uncertain future.

TPS terminated for multiple countries

In 1990, Congress created a temporary protected status program for people fleeing countries enduring natural disasters, wars or other conditions that would make it dangerous for people to return. The program granted these people the right to live and work in the United States for a temporary period of time that could be extended.

Seventeen countries were covered by TPS designations as of late March, accounting for about 1.3 million foreign nationals living in the United States who were covered. But the Trump administration has sought to winnow back protections for citizens from several countries.

In February, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was seeking to end TPS protections for citizens of Haiti, which had been covered under the program since the country experienced a devastating earthquake in 2010. A federal judge later blocked that move after accusing DHS of failing to follow procedures mandated by Congress.

The administration has also moved to end TPS status or reverse extensions for Venezuela, Afghanistan, Cameroon, Nepal, Honduras, Nicaragua and Syria.

In November, DHS moved to also end TPS for South Sudan and Burma, both of which have been mired by years of civil war.

As of December, 12 countries are covered under TPS, though several of their designations are set to expire next year. That timeline could change pending legal action.

Refugee admissions stopped except White South Africans

The Trump administration in October announced it was restricting the number of refugees the United States would admit to 7,500 each year — a miniscule amount for a country that had long been a beacon to millions of people fleeing war, poverty and persecution in their home countries and had allowed refugees under programs that enjoyed bipartisan support.

In 2024, the US admitted just over 100,000 refugees, primarily from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan, Venezuela and Syria.

The main group being welcomed under Trump is White South Africans. The president and officials within his administration, including his sometime adviser, billionaire South African-born Elon Musk, claim that group is facing persecution, racism, threats and murder in their home country.

Both Trump and Musk alleged that White South Africans were being discriminated against due to land reform policies implemented by that country’s government which sought to redress the legacy of apartheid, the system under which non-White South Africans were forcibly displaced from their lands in favor of Whites. Black South Africans, who comprise over 80% of the population of 63 million, own only around 4% of private land.

The government of South Africa has strongly refuted the administration’s claims that it is discriminating against its White citizens.

CNN previously reported the Trump administration is also moving to reinterview certain refugees who were admitted to the United States under Biden as part of a comprehensive review of their cases.

Green cards under scrutiny

The shooting of guard members in Washington last week also prompted USCIS to announce “a full scale, rigorous reexamination of every Green Card for every alien from every country of concern.” Green card holders have the ability to live and work permanently in the US but do not enjoy the full benefits of citizenship, including the right to vote or hold an American passport.

Asked to clarify which countries were of concern, USCIS pointed CNN toward a presidential proclamation in June that named 19 countries including Cuba, Laos, Venezuela, Haiti and Afghanistan.

Reviewing individual green card holders from each of those countries could be a monumental task requiring the administration to review the statuses of tens of thousands of people. It’s unclear when the review will end.

Work visas restricted

In September, the administration sought to place restrictions on certain work visas, claiming these visas were used to the detriment of American workers who were being replaced rather than supplanted by the foreign workers.

Trump signed an executive action imposing a $100,000 application fee for H-1B visas, which are commonly used by tech companies who say the program is necessary to fill out workers who they cannot find in the United States. About 65,000 H-1B visas are granted annually, and the demand for the visas often exceeds their supply.

In October, the administration announced several changes to the program, including narrowing the definition of “specialty occupation,” enhancing DHS’ “ability to enforce compliance through worksite inspections,” and reforming the wage methodology that officials argued previously put American workers at a disadvantage.

One industry that the president seems hesitant to restrict is agriculture, which relies heavily on both legal and undocumented immigrant labor.

While the president was taking a hardline stance against undocumented immigration this summer, behind the scenes members of his administration were working to assuage concerns in that industry about the effects of an immigration crackdown, and the president’s own tone toward undocumented farm workers has been noticeably softer compared to other sectors.

Student visas reduced

The administration has issued thousands of fewer visas for international students than had been typical during previous years.

The administration this year has also targeted the existing visas of thousands of international students, with particular attention on those who were active in campus protests that opposed Israel’s military campaign in Gaza.

The State Department has revoked about 6,000 student visas this year, and the administration’s restrictive stance toward what students studying on visas can post to social media has discouraged others from even applying to study in the United States.

Reasons for the visa revocations have ranged from high-profile cases involving allegations of support for terrorist organizations to relatively minor incidents that include years-old misdemeanor crimes.

Earlier this year, the administration paid particular attention to visas for Chinese students. The Trump administration moved to “aggressively revoke” Chinese student visas before later reversing course.

In an interview with Fox News last month, the president said he thinks “it’s good” to have students from “outside countries” enrolled at American universities — and defended China while attacking France, a close American ally.

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