US President Donald Trump declared a national emergency at the US-Mexico border, and he plans to send his troops to help support immigration agents and restrict access to refugees and asylum seekers.

A memo appears to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to target programs that let in more than a million people.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo provides guidance for the use of a fast-track deportation process that the Trump administration reinstated earlier this week, suggesting officers focus on migrants who failed to request asylum within a one-year deadline after arriving in the U.

The Trump administration is powering ahead with efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement, opening up the possibility of targeting migrants who entered through Biden-era programs and invoking an obscure immigration statute to make it easier to deputize state and local law enforcement to arrest and detain immigrants in the U.

Many of the migrants under threat spent months waiting in Mexico, at migrant shelters or in rented rooms, in cities that are rife with cartel violence and kidnappings, in order to enter the US with permission.