Another major change to the legal immigration system; the Trump administration wants to eliminate "duration of status" visas for international students, exchange visitors, and international media.
Students would be limited to visas that last 2-4 years, with extensions allowed.
Under DHS's proposal, it seems that international journalists on assignment in the US would be effectively prohibited from remaining for long periods of time.
The proposal would limit their visas to at most 240 days, and require them to file for Extension of Statuses after that.
New restrictions on student visas would also be imposed by the rule, including limiting language training students to a maximum 24-month period of stay, requiring students to leave the U.S. more quickly after their visa expires, and setting a limit on changing educational levels.
Importantly, under the new rule international students would receive automatic six-month extensions of their status once they filed for an extension, which would in times when @USCIS was actually functional ensure that people would get an answer before their status expired.
Here's the full list of changes DHS says the rule would make for international media.
I don't know much about "I" visas, so I don't know how many foreign journalists use them to remain in the US for long periods of time. But these changes seem designed to make that impossible.
Here's another good thread going over some of the more fine details of the rule, from someone with significantly more experience in these types of visas than me.
Importantly, @doug_rand notes that the new proposed rule would effectively impose racist nationality-based limitations on some foreign students, declaring people security threats purely based on the place they were born and the nationality they posses.
Probably the biggest change in the rule would be a ban on student visas longer than 2 years for any person born in, or a citizen of, a country with a student visa overstay rate over 10%—meaning no bachelor/grad degrees.
Mexico commits to another large deployment of its National Guard to the northern border, claiming they will focus on preventing fentanyl trafficking, and Trump calls off the tariffs for now.
Of course, since most fentanyl is smuggled by US citizens, this won't stop much at all.
The deployment of Mexican National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in 2019 under Trump had zero impact on fentanyl smuggling before, because it's not migrants who are smuggling fentanyl in the overwhelming majority of cases. Fentanyl traffic continued to rise each year.
To emphasize once again: the vast majority of fentanyl traffickers are US citizens, who get less scrutiny when reentering the country at ports of entry.
Here's the Sentencing Commission noting that in FY 2023, 86.4% of people sentenced for fentanyl trafficking were US citizens.
Colombia has accepted hundreds of deportation flights in the past years. It rejected two flights using military planes, but agreed to continue taking flights using normal ICE planes.
In response, the Trump administration has done the equivalent of punching them in the face.
All repatriations are governed by bilateral agreements. Every country has an absolute right to set the terms by which they take deportations from another country.
And if you don’t know why military planes might be an issue, pick up a book on 20th century Latin American history.
Obviously I am not Gustavo Petro nor am I Colombian, so my thoughts on this are purely my own, but I can’t help but think that Trump’s actions eliminated an easy off-ramp for Petro to get the U.S. to say they’ll be nicer and then keep on taking deportation flights like normal.
When speaking to experts in Latin America, I've been told that the use of military planes by the United States could be seen as an insult. And now it seems they were right; Mexico's president just refused to take a deportation flight from the US for the first time in years.
Two military plane deportation flights were carried out to Guatemala, but as this user pointed out, Mexico appears to have denied the US permission to use Mexican airspace.
Mexico has been taking US deportations for a century, so that's noteworthy.
🚨NEW! The Trump administration has invoked a decades-old, never-before-invoked, legal authority that permits them to authorize willing state and local enforcement officers to carry out "any of the powers, privileges, or duties" of an immigration officer (ICE or Border Patrol).
The memo invokes an obscure law Congress enacted decades ago authorizing DHS (then INS) to declare a "mass influx" and deputize local law enforcement as full immigration officers.
DHS must enter into written agreements and oversee any deputized LEOs. dhs.gov/sites/default/…
This will be subject to legal challenge, especially given the sweeping delegation of authority, which claims a mass influx in all 50 states (including Alaska and Hawaii apparently, which is obviously absurd). But courts may be deferential to executive use of this authority.
I can quibble with the timeline on some of these (e.g. "restart wall construction" will take months to put into action given the state of contractual issues) but I agree that the majority of this will be attempted. The most immediate EO impact will be cuts to legal immigration.
Actually this is a great opportunity to do a thread on some of the things to look out for on in the first week. I'm going to mirror @David_J_Bier's thread here and go over some thoughts about each. Sorry David for spamming your mentions.
Let's start with CHNV parole.
@David_J_Bier The CHNV program came through a deal with Mexico, where they'd take US deportations of some non-Mexican nationals in exchange for the US taking a reciprocal number via alternate legal pathways.
The program worked. Border crossings dropped. But migrants do get to come in legally.