WASHINGTON – The free mobile application once used by migrants to schedule appointments at the U.S.-Mexico border became an example, or in some cases a counterexample, of how technology should be leveraged in the U.S. immigration system.
The CBP One mobile application was first introduced in October 2020 toward the end of President Donald Trump’s first term. It was later relaunched in 2023 under the Biden administration and became the only way for migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border to schedule appointments to seek asylum in the United States until Trump shut it down on the first day of his second term.
All appointments were canceled on Jan. 20, 2025 as a part of Trump’s “Securing Our Borders” executive order, leaving around 30,000 migrants without an appointment or path to seek asylum in the U.S.
John Fabbricatore, former senior executive and field office director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said the CBP One app was a “disaster” at a congressional hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Tuesday.
“[The] CBP One app, I believe, was definitely misused by the Biden administration to allow people to come in,” Fabbricatore said. “We have seen a lot of those cases that have entered on the CBP One app show up as criminal aliens in the arrests that we’ve made.”
However, experts said the function of CBP One was not to grant asylum or any immigration benefits to the migrants. Its main purpose was to work like a scheduling app that allowed migrants to schedule appointments for later inspections where they were screened and vetted by immigration officers.
“Just getting the appointment doesn’t give you any legal status. Getting the appointment doesn’t even guarantee you will be let into the United States. Its sole purpose was to make it more efficient for immigration officers processing people at the border,” Vanessa Dojaquez-Torres, Practice and Policy Counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association said.
Deborah Fleischaker worked at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE during the Biden administration and witnessed the effect of the CBP One app after it was relaunched under former President Joe Biden.
“[CBP One] allowed us to organize ourselves, and it allowed us to plan for and appropriately staff the border patrol offices because we knew who was going to be coming on any given day,” Fleischaker said. “Previously people would cue and wait maybe for days or weeks.”
The cancellation of the CBP One app means that there is no longer a way for migrants to schedule appointments to seek asylum, leaving them vulnerable to extortion while waiting in border towns in Mexico, according to Dojaquez-Torres.
“We’re putting asylum seekers in a very desperate situation in which they may feel forced to cross the border in between ports of entry, which is not what we want and not what should happen,” Dojaquez-Torres said. “Ending the CBP One app was not going to make our border more efficient or work better.”
However, the CBP One app still had its limitations. According to Raul Pinto, senior staff attorney at the American Immigration Council, there were issues with long waiting times, technological accessibility and facial recognition features that negatively impacted migrants of color.
“CBP One is one of the tools to alleviate pressure at the border,” Pinto said. “But CBP One should not be the only available tool for this very vulnerable population to access such an important benefit.”
Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio) said the CBP One app wasn’t “perfect,” but that it was an example of the kind of technology needed in the immigration conversation to “keep up with the demands of the modern world.”
“No one wants dangerous criminals, terrorists or illicit drugs coming in through our borders, but propagating lies and misplaced fear are not going to address the issue,” she said. “Instead of seeking to score political points, we should work on a bipartisan basis to find real solutions to our broken immigration system.”
