The US immigration and asylum system has been thrown into chaos following the National Guard shootings in Washington, and the fall out is likely to have repercussions around the globe.

The Trump administration has halted all asylum decisions following the shootings and President Trump has gone further by announcing he will stop immigration from poor countries.

Nineteen countries have been identified for the strictest bans. These include Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The flurry of immigration decisions came in the wake of the Washington shootings, which left one soldier dead and another in a critical condition, and which officials have accused an Afghan national for perpetrating.

While the first of these specifically targeted Afghans seeking to enter the US, other decisions have been far more wide-reaching.

The USCIS – a branch of the Department of Homeland Security – has been told not to approve, deny or close asylum applications it receives for all nationalities, according to CBS News.

And the US is reviewing all asylum cases approved under former president Joe Biden, with plans to reinterview thousands of refugees approved for settlement.

The US is already prioritising white South Africans for entry and forcefully detaining those in the country illegally.

Migrant and refugee advocates say immigrants to the US, legal or illegal, are being demonised as people who should be driven out of the country and even denaturalised.

The administration is already trying to carry out the largest mass deportation campaign in the history of the United States. But now it seems the deportations might apply to people in the US legally.

Advocates say deporting someone who has illegal permanent residence will be difficult. The administration will have to prove to an immigration judge that immigration law has been violated.

But reports in the US saying the Trump administration’s agenda is much broader with plans to call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum at the United Nations.

US officials have drawn up plans for reframing the global approach to asylum and immigration to reflect President Trump’s restrictive stance.

Under the proposed framework, asylum seekers would be required to claim protection in the first country they enter, not a nation of their choosing.

Asylum would be temporary, and the host country would decide whether conditions in their home country had improved enough to return, a major shift from how asylum currently works in the US and around the world.

Advocates have accused the administration of creating an ‘immigration police state’.

Reports say $US30 billion has been earmarked for enforcement and deportation and another $US45 billion will go toward new detention centres.

The administration has signed more than a thousand agreements that will see local police forces carry out immigration enforcement functions.

Local and state cooperation with federal immigration authorities can lead to harm in the communities that police are meant to serve and protect, advocates say.

Director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative at the Vera Institute of Justice Shayna Kessler told US media: “It increases distrust in law enforcement. It increases fear in immigrant communities, it decreases the ability of immigrants to take care of their families, to support the economy, and to be strong and stable members of their communities.”

She said the administration had already unleashed masked immigration agents across the US, but now, in many places, undocumented migrants will worry that any encounter with a police officer could lead to their deportation.

Meanwhile, there has been significant push back against Trump’s anti-immigration initiatives.

Twenty-one states have sued the Trump administration over a move that blocks some groups of legal immigrants from accessing food aid.

The new arrangements, signed into law in July, narrows some immigrants’ eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the nation’s largest anti-hunger initiative.

Refugee advocates are also set launch legal action after the administration moved to slash the US’ refugee intake to the lowest level in history.

The new cap would see the US admit no more than 7,500 refugees a year, a 94 percent cut from former President Biden’s goal of 125,000.

President Trump has been criticised for using inflammatory language in referring to migrants.

He blamed refugees for causing the “social dysfunction in America” and vowed to remove “anyone who is not a net asset” to the US.

“Hundreds of thousands of refugees from Somalia were completely taking over the once great State of Minnesota,” he said.

“I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover.”

Former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Jeremy McKinney said Trump’s words amounted to “scapegoating”.

“These types of issues – they don’t know skin colour, they don’t know nationality,” he said, referring to the Washington shootings.