Trump Administration Makes a New Push to Speed Up Deportations

The Trump White House is taking extra steps to try to deliver on the president’s signature campaign promise to conduct the largest mass deportation operation in US history. In an internal US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo from February obtained by the Washington Post, the administration instructs immigration officers to look for potential targets for “expedited removal,” a process that enables fast-track deportations without a court hearing.

The memo reportedly identifies migrants who crossed the border unlawfully between ports of entry, as well as those who were allowed into the country but haven’t applied for asylum, as examples of people whose deportations could be facilitated under this program. It also mentions immigrants who lawfully presented themselves at ports of entry but lacked documents or “misrepresented themselves.”

That could potentially include migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba who came to the United States as part of a Biden-administration parole initiative the Trump administration has since terminated, in addition to those who used a now-defunct Customs and Border Protection (CBP) application to make appointments to come apply for admission at the US-Mexico border.

The decision to boost “expedited removal” likely signals Trump’s growing frustration with the pace of interior immigration and enforcement and deportations, which he and border czar Tom Homan consider insufficient in light of the goal of deporting around 1 million people a year. Just a couple of weeks ago, the president removed Caleb Vitello from his role as ICE acting director, in what was widely seen as a sign of Trump’s impatience.

In January, the administration imposed a daily quota of between 1,200 and 1,500 arrests to boost ICE’s metrics. But as I previously wrote, while the sweeping immigration crackdown has had the effect of creating widespread fear—which is the intended goal—it has largely failed to live by the president’s vow to remove “criminals.”

From the beginning, the idea of deporting “millions and millions of criminal aliens” was deceiving. For starters, there aren’t that many deportable undocumented immigrants with criminal records in the country. (Immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than US citizens.) Of the 7.6 million immigrants on US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national docket for potential deportation, the agency reported that about 8 percent had a conviction or pending charges. The most common offenses? Traffic-related, according to ICE’s data.

The use of “expedited removal” has traditionally been limited to recent arrivals found within 100 miles of a US border. But the Trump administration is expanding it to more swiftly deport immigrants anywhere in the country who have been in the United States for up to two years. The latest guidance even suggests some people could be considered for “expedited removal” beyond the two-year time limit and encourages agents to rearrest immigrants they previously couldn’t deport, likely because their countries of origin wouldn’t take them back.

The Trump administration’s push to expand “expedited removal” is already facing legal challenges. In January, the American Civil Liberties (Union) and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit arguing the policy “disregards nearly three decades of experience showing that the expedited removal process, even when used at the border for new arrivals, is rife with errors and results in widespread violations of individuals’ legal rights.”