N.Y. Migrants Fear Expulsion After Trump Expands Deportation Targets

Those who followed Biden-era guidelines are dismayed that the rules have changed. The app that helped them enter the country now may make them targets.

Marlon Luna said he and his girlfriend came into the United States three months ago after fleeing death threats in Venezuela. They waited in Mexico for four long months to secure a Border Patrol appointment instead of crossing illegally. Then they wound up in a New York migrant shelter.

Now, they fear that New York — and America — may be over for them.

On Thursday, the Trump administration issued a memo that widened the scope of people it would seek to deport, including those who, like Mr. Luna, used CBP One, a mobile app, to enter the country.

The Biden administration had used the app to manage the movement of 900,000 migrants through legal ports of entry. Mr. Luna, 23, said he had assumed that if he followed the rules he would have a fair shake. Now, he fears, deportation could happen at any time.

“Some people crossed illegally, but some people wanted to enter in the way that one should,” he said in Spanish outside a Randall’s Island shelter on Friday. “What we are hearing here, and really what everyone is saying, is that at any moment something could happen.”

For nearly three years, thousands of migrants have come to New York City under Biden-era programs that allowed migrants from Venezuela, Haiti and elsewhere to legally enter the United States and temporarily remain for as long as two years. Now the Homeland Security Department has empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to expel those with a temporary legal status known as parole, which also allows migrants to work here.