Trump to expand power to deport
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Tuesday will significantly expand its power to quickly deport undocumented immigrants who have illegally entered the United States within the past two years, using a fast-track deportation process that bypasses immigration judges.
Officials are calling the new strategy, which will take effect immediately, a “necessary response” to the influx of Central Americans and others at the southern border. It will allow immigration authorities to quickly remove immigrants from anywhere they encounter them in the United States, and they expect the approach to help alleviate the nation’s immigration court backlog and free up space in Immigration and Customs Enforcement jails.
The stated targets of the change are people who sneaked into the United States and do not have an asylum case or immigration court date pending. Previously, the administration’s policy for “expedited removal” has been limited to migrants caught within 100 miles of the U.S. border and who have been in the country for less than two weeks. The new rule would apply to immigrants anywhere in the United States who have been in the country for less than two years — adhering to a time limit included in the 1996 federal law that authorized the expedited process.
Immigrants would have to prove to immigration officials that they have been in the United States continuously for the past two years or they could end up in an immigration jail facing quick deportation. And it could be relatively low-level immigration officers — not officers of a court — making the decisions.
President Donald Trump has promised to deport millions of immigrants and has threatened enforcement raids targeting those in as many as 10 major cities.
Nearly 300,000 of the approximately 11 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States entered the country illegally and could face expedited removal, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. The typical undocumented immigrant has lived in the United States for 15 years, according to the Pew Research Center.
Though border apprehensions have fallen in June and July as the U.S. and Mexico intensify their crackdown on the southern border, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin Mcaleenan said in a draft notice Monday that “the implementation of additional measures is a necessary response to the ongoing immigration crisis.” He said the new rule would take effect upon publication in the Federal Register, which is scheduled for Tuesday.
“DHS has determined that the volume of illegal entries, and the attendant risks to national security and public safety presented by these illegal entries, warrants this immediate implementation of DHS’S full statutory authority over expedited removal,” Mcaleenan said in the notice.
Immigration lawyers said the expansion is unprecedented and effectively gives U.S. agents the power to issue deportation orders without bringing an immigrant before a judge or allowing them to speak with a lawyer.
“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” Omar Jadwat, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “We will sue to end this policy quickly.”
Advocates warned that the policy could ensnare longtime legal residents or even U.S. citizens who have been deported in error before. Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said she fears the rule will lead to increased racial profiling and turn ICE into a “show me your papers militia.”
“This new directive flows directly from the racist rhetoric that the president has been using for the last week and indeed months, but this new rule is going to terrorize communities of color,” said Gupta, who was head of the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama.
David Leopold, a Cleveland immigration lawyer and former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said expanding the expedited removal program shifts the decision-making to immigration officers who might not have much experience with such a policy and means that many immigrants who might have the right to remain in the country won’t be given the opportunity to show it.
ICE, which enforces immigration law and makes arrests across the United States, estimates that “a significant number” of undocumented immigrants would be eligible for expedited removal, including at least 20,500 migrants the agency apprehended last fiscal year and more than 6,400 it arrested this year, as of March 30.