When handed a lemon, make lemonade.

And the Trump administration does just that, having announced today the introduction of a CBP Home app, recycled from the now-defunct CBP One app.

According to Fox News:

The Trump administration is rolling out a new app to replace the controversial CBP One app with the new replacement designed to facilitate the self-deportation of illegal immigrants.

The Department of Homeland Security is announcing the CBP Home app -- which will launch with a self-deportation reporting feature for those in the country illegally. 

It replaces the CBP One app, which was expanded by the Biden administration to allow migrants to schedule appointments at ports of entry to be paroled into the U.S. Hundreds of thousands were paroled into the U.S. as a result. The Trump administration has ended the ability to use the app for that purpose.

All CBP One apps will update to the new CBP Home app.

So from catch-and-release, it's now become scrap-capture-and-go-home. The newly renovated app can be viewed here.

What this tells us is that this is an administration that doesn't waste the good work it's done in the past. In this case, the good work was creating the CBP One app. It makes no sense to throw away good code. (The app was initially plagued with bugs, but, apparently, it works pretty well now.) An Israeli defense official once told me the U.S. often throws away a lot of good past technology instead of building on it, so perhaps Trump's turn to the app signals that this kind of government waste is also ending. We often focus on fraud, but constantly reinventing the wheel wastes a lot of money, too.

I have no idea whether a lot of illegal migrants will use this or not, given that illegal immigration, by its very nature, is illegal, so it's possible those here illegally will shy away from a government app. I certainly don't see the career criminals among them using it. But the app also has a lot of other uses, as the website indicates -- and not just for people's intent to depart so CBP won't have to come looking for them and they don't get on a 'ban' list for future legal entry.

The app also helps with border wait times, inspection of agricultural products requests, washing of boots that have been on overseas farms, hunting trophy inspections, provisional entry requests, and more. In other words, efforts on the app won't be wasted even if the illegals don't show up.

Daniel DiMartino points out here a couple of things that could even make it better.

I agree with him -- let anyone who wants to go use it, use it, there need never be a one-year limit, and let bygones be bygones.

As they say, there's an app for everything.

Image: Screen shot from DHS government web page // government work