As part of sweeping plans to change immigration in the United States, the Trump Administration has removed functionality from the CBP One app, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app used by asylum seekers to apply for legal admission to the United States. along the southwest border. Starting January 20, 2025, the app can now be used to schedule an admission appointment and any existing appointments have been cancelled, according to the CBP website.
The CBP One app was introduced in 2020 and was expanded to a tool for asylum seekers in 2023, quickly becoming the only way migrants could “pre-schedule processing appointments and maintain asylum eligibility guaranteed,” according to the American Immigration Council. The app “allowed 1,450 immigrants per day” to schedule an admission appointment, The New York Times writesand has helped more than 900,000 people enter the country since its launch in 2023 until the end of 2024.
Asylum seekers were not warned that the program would end on Jan. 20, and the Trump administration has not outlined what could replace it. Engadget has reached out to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for more information and will update this article if we learn more.
CBP One was revealed to be a problem for the new administration during the vice presidential debatewhen now Vice President JD Vance claimed that there was an application that allowed illegal immigrants to schedule an appointment and obtain legal status in the United States. That's not how CBP One works, and in fact, the Biden administration's use of the app has been criticized for how dramatically it slowed down and complicated the process, leading some asylum seekers to wait up to six months for an appointment.
