Trump administration relaunches CBP One asylum app for ‘self-deportation’

The administration of President Donald Trump has revealed it has overhauled the online application known as CBP One, which was formerly used to process asylum claims at the southern border of the United States.

Now, the app has been reimagined as a platform for “self-deportation”.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem made the announcement on Monday in a statement outlining the changes.

“The CBP Home app gives aliens the option to leave now and self-deport, so they may still have the opportunity to return legally in the future and live the American dream,” Noem said.

“If they don’t, we will find them, we will deport them, and they will never return.”

The newly relaunched app is called CBP Home. Anyone with the pre-existing CBP One app will be redirected to the new version.

CBP One was one of the first targets of Trump’s second term. On the day he returned to office, January 20, Trump issued a directive calling for the government to cease using CBP One, as part of his broader crackdown on immigration.

The very next day, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) — the federal agency that ran the app — confirmed that all asylum appointments made through the app had been cancelled.

The decision left thousands of asylum seekers stranded at the border, some after weeks or months of waiting for their scheduled appointments.

“It was a huge blow. After all we’ve been through, all the waiting, all the hope, it’s incredibly disheartening,” one asylum seeker, Giovanni Martino, told Al Jazeera last month.

CBP One was launched during Trump’s first term, to arrange an array of immigration services. It facilitated appointments to inspect perishable goods shipped across the US border and allowed international travellers to check on the status of their I-94 admissions applications.

But in 2023 — under Trump’s first-term successor, President Joe Biden — the US government announced it would expand the use of CBP One.

The app became the primary means of claiming asylum at the border, in a controversial move that critics compared to Trump’s own attempts to clamp down on asylum.

Both US and international law recognises the right to seek asylum, and that includes the right to cross international borders if a claimant fears persecution.

But the Biden administration warned that, except in rare cases, asylum seekers who crossed the border irregularly — outside of official ports of entry and without authorising documents — could face a five-year ban from reentering the US and possible criminal prosecution.

It required that nearly all asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border register for appointments through the app, or else face expulsion.

Still, as Trump campaigned for re-election in 2024, he and his allies accused Biden of using the app as an open gateway for migrants to enter the US.

At an October rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for instance, Trump alleged without evidence that the app was being used by Mexican cartels to offload human cargo.

“They have an app that’s being used by the cartel leaders, people that are making billions of dollars. The cartel leaders — think of this — call the app and they say where to drop the illegal migrants,” Trump said.

In Monday’s statement, Noem doubled down on Trump’s accusations that Biden misused the CBP One app.

“The Biden Administration exploited the CBP One app to allow more than 1 million aliens to illegally enter the United States,” she said. “With the launching of the CBP Home app, we are restoring integrity to our immigration system.”

She framed the CBP Home app as part of a wider advertising campaign the Trump administration has pursued, entitled “Stay Out and Leave Now”.

The Trump administration has revoked several legal pathways for migrants to stay in the US, including temporary protected status and humanitarian parole for certain groups.

Trump also issued a proclamation suspending asylum processing at the border indefinitely, a move critics consider illegal. Groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) are currently fighting to lift the suspension in court.