in effect
This is a presidential Executive Order (EO 14165), signed January 20, 2025 and published in the Federal Register on January 30, 2025. It directs federal agencies — mainly the Departments of Homeland Security, Defense, State, Justice, and Health and Human Services — to take steps the President frames as securing the U.S. southern border. It sets policy and assigns tasks to those agencies rather than creating new law itself.
It orders agencies to build temporary and permanent physical barriers and deploy more personnel along the southern border, and to detain people caught for immigration violations “to the fullest extent permitted by law” until they are removed, ending the practice the order calls “catch-and-release.” It directs DHS to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols (returning certain asylum seekers to the country they came from while their cases proceed), to stop using the “CBP One” app to admit otherwise-inadmissible people, and to end categorical parole programs including the process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. It also requires DNA collection and identity/family-relationship verification for detained immigrants, tells prosecutors to prioritize border-related crimes such as human smuggling and trafficking, and sets one deadline: within 14 days, several cabinet secretaries must give the President recommendations on additional actions.
The federal agencies named in the order carry out the work, and the order invites cooperation with state and local law enforcement. People crossing or present at the southern border — including asylum seekers and those who used CBP One or the named parole programs — are directly affected through detention, return, or removal. The order states it creates no legal rights anyone can enforce in court, and that it depends on existing law and available funding.