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Trump declares border emergency and seeks to end US birthright citizenship

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By Juliet Aliwo

From behind his desk in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders and decrees aimed at cracking down on immigration, BBC report.

From one order tackling the definition of birthright citizenship, to another declaring illegal immigration at the border a national emergency, Trump swiftly made moves on his promises to tighten the US-Mexico border.

But some of his plans – particularly around changing the definition of birthright citizenship – are likely to face significant hurdles.

He is already facing legal challenges from immigration advocacy groups, which have reacted furiously to his announcements.

One organisation said his plans “do not uphold American values”, and another said Trump’s administration was “actively trying to destroy our lives”.

In his inaugural address earlier in the day, Trump vowed that “all illegal entry will be halted” and that millions of “criminal aliens” would be deported.

He also signed an order declaring Mexican drug cartels terrorist organisations. “I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions,” he explained.

At another event at Washington’s Capital One Arena, Trump formally revoked nearly 80 executive actions of his predecessor Joe Biden. He had previously vowed to scrap Biden’s policies “within five minutes”.

Following his inauguration, he also signed a proclamation that gave officials the authority to “repel, repatriate, or remove” migrants until he was satisfied that “the invasion at the southern border has ceased”.

Although the details of the order are not yet known, officials have said that Trump plans to end birthright citizenship.

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That refers to an approach of the US government whereby anyone born on American soil is considered a citizen at birth, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

Trump appears to be seeking to change the rules so that that the children of undocumented migrants living in the US will no longer automatically be considered US citizens. It would not apply retrospectively.

Exactly how he intends to achieve this is unclear, however, because birthright citizenship is enshrined in the constitution and would require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress to change.

Trump has instructed federal agencies to stop issuing documentation to children born in the US to parents who are in the country illegally or on temporary visas, which could effectively deny them access to public services.

Advocacy group the American Civil Liberties Union (ALCU) immediately said it was suing the Trump administration over the order. “Denying citizenship to US-born children is not only unconstitutional – it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values,” it said in a statement.

The new administration has also moved to swiftly scrap CBP One, a mobile application used by migrants to book appointments to appear at a port of entry.

Biden administration officials had credited the app with helping reduce the number of detentions at the border since it was first introduced in January 2023. It was the only legal pathway to request asylum at the US-Mexico border.

Now, the Customs and Border Protection website notes that the app is “no longer available”.

App users also now are shown a message noting that “existing appointments scheduled through CBP One are no longer valid”.

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According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, the Biden administration had scheduled roughly 30,000 appointments via CBP One for migrants to enter the US in the next three weeks.

Other estimates had suggested that as many as 270,000 migrants were in Mexico waiting for an opportunity to enter the US using CBP One.

In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, some migrants reported feeling defeated and deflated after learning of CBP One’s demise.

“I hope God touches his [Trump’s] heart,” said Oralia, a Mexican woman who fled cartel violence in her home state along with her epileptic son. “We really do need the help.”

She had been waiting for an appointment through CBP One for seven months.

Among his other day-one moves, Trump ordered a shutdown of another Biden-era initiative, which allowed up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to fly to the US per month. Like the CBP One app, it was designed to lower the number of illegal crossings.

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Screenshot of the CBP One app, with a message reading: "Existing appointments scheduled through CBP One are no longer valid"
The CBP One app stopped working shortly after Trump became president.

Immigration advocacy groups have reacted furiously to Trump’s various orders.

As well as the criticism from the ACLU, the president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum said the orders were “disappointing but not surprising”.

“The expected orders would separate families and weaken our economy,” Jennie Murray’s statement continued. “They do not uphold American values.”

Greisa Martinez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream – a national immigrant youth organisation – said that the orders show that the administration “will spend the next four years actively trying to destroy our lives”.

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“Trump’s pledges to carry out mass raids and deportations will have devastating consequences on communities nationwide, leaving millions of families and individuals in disarray if immediate action is not taken by our elected officials to publicly fight back,” she added.

USA

Strange: “Joe You Are Fired” Trump revokes Biden’s security clearance

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By John Audu.

President Donald Trump on Friday revoked his predecessor Joe Biden’s security clearance in a blizzard of new orders; while escalating his campaign to dismantle the US humanitarian agency charged with helping the world’s poorest and extending American influence around the globe.

In a new series of rapid-fire power plays, the 78-year-old billionaire also froze aid to South Africa, where his top donor Elon Musk was born, and named himself head of one of Washington’s premier cultural venues, the Kennedy Center.

“There is no need for Joe Biden to continue receiving access to classified information,” Trump said on his Truth Social network, adding that he was “immediately” revoking the Democrat’s security clearances and ending his daily intelligence briefings.

“JOE, YOU’RE FIRED,” he added in all caps.

US presidents are traditionally given the right to receive intelligence briefings even after they step down.

Trump also stepped up his assault on the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes humanitarian aid globally.

“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” he wrote on his Truth Social app about USAID, without offering evidence.

USAID has received the most concentrated fire since Trump launched a crusade led by Musk — the world’s richest person — to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government.

On Friday, Musk — who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances — reposted photos of the agency’s signage being removed from its Washington headquarters.

The Trump administration has frozen foreign aid, ordered thousands of internationally-based staff to return to the United States, and begun slashing the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees to around only 300.

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Labour unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught. A federal judge on Friday ordered a pause to the administration’s plan to put 2,200 USAID workers on paid leave by the weekend.

Democrats say it would be unconstitutional for Trump to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s green light.

– Soft power –

The United States’ current budget allocates about $70 billion for international assistance, a tiny fraction of overall spending.

But it gets a big bang for its buck. USAID alone runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including in the world’s poorest regions, boosting Washington’s battle for influence against rivals such as China.

“We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Joe Biden, wrote in a scathing New York Times opinion piece.

Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticized what they say is wasteful spending abroad.

Also Friday, Trump named himself as chairman of the Kennedy Center, suggesting that the stately white marble entertainment complex overlooking the Potomac River did not reflect his own values.

“Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth — THIS WILL STOP,” he wrote on Truth Social, without explaining what show he was referring to.

Trump has repeatedly attacked gender-nonconforming people.

He also followed up Friday on a promise to freeze US aid to South Africa, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farmland to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.

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Musk has frequently criticized the South African government.

– Racist social posts –

Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted.

While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the budget-slashing moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.

An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday another judge paused an attempt to offer mass buyouts to federal workers, pending arguments on Monday.

Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.

An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.

Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.

On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.

Vice President JD Vance weighed in Friday saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life.”

AFP

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USA

Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Birthright Citizenship Order.

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By Mercy Okpe .

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked Donald Trump’s attempt to restrict birthright citizenship in the United States in a blow to the president’s bid to end a right enshrined in the Constitution for more than a century.

The ruling indefinitely bans enforcement of one of Trump’s most controversial executive orders, which was due to come into effect nationwide on February 19.
“The denial of the precious right to citizenship will cause irreparable harm,” District Judge Deborah Boardman was reported as saying during the hearing at a Maryland court.
She noted that Supreme Court precedent protects birthright citizenship, adding that Trump’s order “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment,” the Washington Post reported.
“No court in the country has ever endorsed the president’s interpretation,” she said. “This court will not be the first.”

The injunction adds to a 14-day stay on enforcement of Trump’s executive order issued in January by a federal judge in Washington state.
There, US District Judge John Coughenour condemned the order as “blatantly unconstitutional,” though Trump quickly told reporters he planned to appeal the ruling.
Birthright citizenship is enshrined in the US Constitution under the 14th Amendment which decrees that anyone born on US soil is a citizen.
Trump’s order was premised on the idea that anyone in the United States illegally, or on a visa, was not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the country, and therefore excluded from this category.

His opponents have argued that the 14th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868 as the United States sought to recover from the Civil War, has been settled law for over a century.
They have cited an 1898 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of a Chinese-American man named Wong Kim Ark, who was denied reentry to the United States on the grounds that he was not a citizen.
The court affirmed that children born in the United States, including those born to immigrants, could not be denied citizenship.

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Yoruba woman in diaspora makes wave, Abayomi sworn in as Judge in New York civil court

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By Gbenga Joshua

Another Yoruba woman, Abayomi Whint, has made history by being sworn in as a judge for the Kings County New York Civil Court.

This milestone was shared in a heartwarming video on her Instagram page, captioned “Welcome to the bench, Your Honor!” on January 23, 2025.

Whint was among eight candidates elected as judges in Brooklyn in November 2024.

During her swearing-in ceremony at Brooklyn Law School, she took the oath of office, promising to “…discharge the duties of the office of judge for the Kings County New York Civil Court, according to the best of my ability. So help me God.”

Her family and friends, dressed in white and green, cheered her on as she marked this significant achievement.

With over 20 years of experience practicing law primarily in the public sector, Whint brings a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her new role.

As an experienced litigator, certified mediator, and arbitrator specializing in conflict resolution, she has a strong track record of fostering cultures of belonging, team building, and applying restorative practices

According to her LinkedIn profile, Whint views justice as “an active commitment to fairness, equity, and truth in every decision.”

Her dedication to social justice and equity has been evident throughout her career, and her election as a judge is a testament to her hard work and commitment to serving her community.

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Africa

Kash Patel: Trump nominee reveals US NAVY SEAL Team Six rescued American hostage in Nigeria in under a minute

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President Donald Trump’s nominee for the FBI director, Kash Patel, on Thursday, said the U.S. SEAL Team Six spent only 60 seconds in rescuing a kidnapped American citizen who had been kept hostage in northern Nigeria.

Mr Patel stated this during his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate on January 30, 2025.

He was grilled about his role in the secret operation to rescue Philip Walton, a 27-year-old son of American missionaries who had been kidnapped by armed bandits from the neighbouring Niger and moved to northern Nigeria for ransom.

“The operation lasted for 60 seconds,” Mr Patel told the U.S. Congress on Thursday.

He was further grilled about his alleged carelessness in parroting a false approval that the Nigerian government had given the SEAL Team Six clearance to use the Nigerian airspace. Mr Patel was the brain behind the rescue operation, having obtained intelligence on the location where Mr Walton was being held.

He saw the opportunity for the Seal Team Six to strike given the bandits could move Mr Walton to a new location.

It was while the aircraft was aboard with agents mid-air that the U.S. senior officials learnt that the Nigerian government had not yet granted the Navy SEALs clearance to use their airspace, let alone land.

Then-Defence Secretary, Mark Esper, in his memoir, noted it was one of Mr Patel’s numerous slip-ups and that he was highly concerned for the SEALs, particularly whether they would get shot down from the unauthorised mission.

“I was concerned that being packed in an aircraft burning holes in the sky for an extra hour or so would wear on the special operators, that it might affect their readiness somehow,” ABC cited Mr Esper’s memoir recounting the op.

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Mr Esper said the SEALs had their suspicions that Mr Patel fabricated the clearance he said the Nigerian government gave them.

“My team suspected Patel made the approval story up, but they didn’t have all the facts,” Mr Esper wrote.

Mr Patel refuted the allegations in his own book “Government Gangsters” claiming there were persons who tried to undermine the president’s agenda by raising roadblocks to counterterrorism missions in Africa and the Middle East.

The operation was eventually a success after the State Department intervened and acted swiftly to obtain airspace permission from the Nigerian authorities before the Navy SEALs landed.

Mr Patel has faced significant opposition in his quest to become FBI director and it is yet unclear whether he answered the queries satisfactorily.

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