US orders pause to programs allowing temporary immigrant settlement, NYT reports

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(Reuters) -U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials have ordered what amounts to a pause in several programs that allow immigrants to settle temporarily in the United States, the New York Times reported on Friday.

The directive demands an immediate end to “final decisions”on certain visa applications pending a review by the Trump administration about whether to cancel the programs permanently, the Times reported, citing an email sent by the top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The programs offer possible entry for a large number of immigrants from an array of countries, including war-torn Ukraine and others dealing with political upheaval or extreme poverty.

President Donald Trump, on his first day in office on Monday, issued a series of executive orders intended to deter illegal immigration and position the U.S. to deport millions of immigrants without legal status.

The Trump administration is pushing ahead with efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement, opening up the possibility of targeting migrants who entered through Biden-era programs and invoking an obscure immigration statute to make it easier to deputize state and local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

One terminated program had allowed migrants waiting in Mexico to schedule an appointment to request asylum at a legal border crossing. Another allowed Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans outside the U.S. to enter by air if they had U.S. sponsors and undergone vetting.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Tom Hogue and William Mallard)