The sweeping crackdown that President Trump declared in the wake of last week’s shooting of two National Guard members by a suspect who officials say is an Afghan national is poised to radically curtail the ability of immigrants from around the world to both achieve and maintain legal status in the United States, putting up a series of roadblocks unparalleled in recent history.
Within a matter of days, the administration rolled out a series of far-reaching policy changes: pausing all asylum decisions for migrants currently in the United States; reviewing the green cards that allow people from 19 countries, mostly from the Middle East or Africa, to live and work permanently in the United States; reassessing the asylum approvals issued during the Biden administration; indefinitely halting immigration applications filed by Afghan nationals; and barring Afghans from entering the country.
The new rules are poised to potentially upend the status of as many as 1.5 million migrants with pending asylum cases in the country, the more than 50,000 who gained asylum from the Department of Homeland Security under the Biden administration and untold more who had been hoping to seek refuge in the United States.
The New York Times isn't very happy.