WASHINGTON — The morning after President Donald Trump tweeted a potentially drastic change to the nation’s immigration standards, White House officials could not explain what he meant when he wrote that he planned to sign an order to “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”
The lack of clarity reflects the often-chaotic nature of policy making in Trump’s White House. It also suggests the tweet could amount to fairly little in terms of policy changes. The State Department a month ago announced it was canceling visa appointments at consulates and embassies worldwide, effectively shutting down most new entries to the U.S.
Trump has been openly frustrated with polls showing the majority of Americans feel he has done a bad job handling the coronavirus, and he has frequently turned to immigration — a main campaign staple for him — when he feels a need to demonstrate executive action.
Because he has often promised sweeping executive actions that have not lived up to his rhetoric, without written text it is impossible to judge the potential impact of one of his pledges.
Trump’s tweet said a ban would be in response to the coronavirus.
An executive order imposing a ban on immigrants could exclude farmworkers, health care workers or other groups on whom key U.S. industries heavily rely.
Like other efforts by the administration to bypass certain U.S. laws and international obligations in order to achieve its long-stated goal of dramatically reducing immigration to the United States, Trump’s promised executive action, which could happen as early as today, is likely to face legal challenge.
Although an across-the-board ban had never been imposed in the U.S., immigration law gives the president broad authority to restrict entries in emergencies. The Supreme Court in 2018 upheld Trump’s authority to impose a travel ban on a group of countries, most of which have Muslim majorities, that the administration said posed a risk of terrorism.
Already, most entries into the U.S. have been put on hold. Just Monday, the administration extended an effective closure of U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico to “nonessential travel,” as well as a controversial order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that immigration officials are citing to rapidly expel most migrants at the U.S. southern border.
In a month, U.S. border authorities have turned back roughly 11,000 would-be migrants with minimal processing, including, for the first time under the U.S. modern immigration system, asylum seekers and hundreds of unaccompanied children.
Most visa offices abroad have closed, applications for other travel to the U.S. have been frozen, and interviews for citizenship and other forms of permanent legal status have been suspended. Immigration courts across the country have been shuttered, and hearings suspended or rescheduled.
The refugee program, already drastically reduced, has effectively ground to a halt.
The administration has made exceptions for some workers, however. Officials recently touted bringing in Mexican and Central American agricultural laborers and extending H2A permissions for agriculture and seasonal workers, saying that would “protect the nation’s food supply chain, and lessen impacts from the coronavirus (COVID-19) public health emergency.”
A White House statement Tuesday morning did little to clarify what Trump meant. Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump is committed to protecting Americans’ health and economic well-being in “unprecedented times.” The statement then quoted Trump’s prior comments about the formerly strong economy that are unrelated to immigration.
A Washington Post poll released Tuesday morning said 54% of Americans view his response to the pandemic negatively, while 72% say governors have done a good job in handling the virus. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat whose televised briefings have made him one of the most prominent faces among governors, is scheduled to visit the White House on Tuesday.
Trump often returns to the topic of immigration when he is concerned about losing support from his political base. Trump tweeted Tuesday that he has “96% Approval Rating in the Republican Party. Thank you! This must also mean that, most importantly, we are doing a good (great) job in the handling of the Pandemic.”
The most recent Gallup poll showed Trump’s approval among Republicans at 93%. It also showed his approval at 43% among American adults — down 6 points since mid-March. The Washington Post poll found that only 77% of Republicans approved of his coronavirus response, a troubling sign for his overall approval in an election year in which the faltering economy is not expected to recover quickly.
Amid the electoral uncertainty, Trump has turned to lengthy White House briefings, which began as a tool for providing updates on the pandemic, to reinforce his political rhetoric.
On Monday, he invited an Army lieutenant general to discuss the construction of temporary hospitals, only to ask him for an update on building the wall along the border with Mexico, Trump’s signature campaign promise.
The wall marks another example of Trump’s actions not matching his rhetoric. He repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay to build a big “beautiful wall” across the border. But Mexico has contributed nothing and most of the construction has gone toward rebuilding and updating existing barriers.
After more than three years, a declaration of a national emergency, and more than $15 billion in American tax dollars directed toward the project, the administration has added only “approximately 2 miles” of new barrier where there wasn’t any before, according to the latest status report from Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.
Trump’s reelection campaign and the main super PAC that supports it rolled out a different line of attack only last week, blaming China for the coronavirus outbreak and portraying Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, as conciliatory toward Beijing.
But the president has been ambivalent in recent days about following that script. “I don’t want to embarrass countries that I like and leaders that I like,” he said Saturday.
Inside and outside the White House, some Trump aides and allies have pushed him to hold off on casting blame and to focus instead on meeting the “commander in chief” moment the pandemic has presented.
But he remains concerned about maintaining his political base, which two people who have spoken with him in recent days view as the reason why he has encouraged his supporters in certain states to “liberate” themselves from stay-at-home orders issued by several Democratic governors — and why he is pushing forward with the anti-immigration approach that propelled his campaign four years ago.
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(Los Angeles Times staff writer Chris Megerian in Washington contributed to this report.)
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