Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced the launch of the CBP Home App on March 10 and on March 11, Indian PhD student Ranjani Srinivasan applied for sel-deportation and fled to Canada when ICE agents visited her in her Columbia University accommodation. Her student visa was revoked on allegations of supporting Hamas though she claimed she was not an activist and was not part of any protest group. But as the university informed her that they canceled her enrolment after her student visa was revoked, she found it safe to leave the country on her own.
What is the CBP Home App?
Not a new application, but an overhaul of CBP One and for the opposite reason. CBP One was formerly used to process asylum claims at the southern border. CBP Home was launched for self-deportation.
Those who want to leave the country can fill out a form on the app along with their photo in an ‘Intent to Depart’ statement to the government. The individual will have to provide biographical information, current phone number and also whether he or she has enough money to depart and a valid and unexpired passport.
Individuals with no legal status in the US can leave the country and then return again in the future legally through self-deportation. Otherwise, the Trump administration had warned, that they would be caught, deported which will never allow them to return.
Ranjani Srinivasan was not in the US illegally. She came to the US from India as part of the Fulbright program in 2016 and started her doctoral; program at Columbia University in 2020. She said she was in the fifth year of an urban planning doctoral program at the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and was supposed to graduate in May. On March 5, her student visa was revoked which made her lose legality on US soil. “I’m just surprised that I’m a person of interest,” she said. “I’m kind of a rando, like, absolute random,” she said to NYT from Canada.
CBP One and CBP Home
CBP One app was launched during Trump’s first term to arrange immigration services. But in 2023, it became an app to claim asylum at the border. One of the first things that Trump did after coming back to power was to overhaul the app to allow illegal immigrants to register and leave the country.