The American Immigration Council does not endorse or oppose candidates for elected office. We aim to provide analysis regarding the implications of the election on the U.S. immigration system.

Written by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow; and Adriel Orozco, Senior Policy Counsel

As the Trump administration continued to ramp up immigration enforcement measures across the United States last week, new “red flags” emerged; policy measures that dramatically impact the basic rights of immigrants in this country or that erode basic legal protections and good governance. These red flags range from new collaborations between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and state and local government, to efforts to deport seven men to South Sudan, a country they had never been to. Here’s a round-up of the red flags coming out of the Trump administration in the last week.

Repeated attacks on basic due process

Here’s what we know: Last week, the Trump administration continued its ongoing attacks on due process for non-citizens.

  • A federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the Trump administration had “unquestionably” violated a court order by putting eight men on a plane to South Sudan (on the brink of a renewed civil war) without giving them meaningful notice and an opportunity to raise fears of torture and harm. Judge Murphy ordered DHS to hold the men for 15 days while they go through a process to challenge their removal and held that the administration must warn a person facing removal to a country they do not know with at least 10 days’ notice. If the individuals currently being held in Djibouti succeed in showing that they likely face persecution or torture in South Sudan, ICE may be required to return them to the U.S. for further proceedings.
  • The Trump administration suffered another loss on its invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, with a federal judge ruling that an American Immigration Council client detained in Georgia could not be legally subject to the 1798 law because ICE has failed to offer meaningful due process. Like the Supreme Court, the judge ruled that the administration’s policy of giving people 12 hours to object and 24 hours to file a habeas corpus lawsuit was unconstitutional.
  • The Trump administration’s efforts to limit due process through “self-deportation” also ramped up, with the first charter flight last week of people who took the administration’s $1,000 “self-deportation” benefit. The flights, which went to Honduras and Colombia, had 65 people on board, including U.S. citizen children who were also paid the $1,000 benefit to “self-deport.” In a new op-ed, the Council’s Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick breaks down how this policy may be a bait and switch for some immigrants.

ICE targets non-citizens for arrest while they appear for their proceedings in immigration court

Here’s what we know: Last week ICE agents began a nationwide operation to arrest non-citizens appearing at their immigration court hearings in several states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Washington. There are likely other incidents in other states across the country. Reports indicate that government attorneys, who are employed within ICE, were told to request dismissals of cases from immigration judges. Once a person’s case was dismissed, ICE agents arrested the non-citizen. Given the dismissal of the immigration court proceedings, ICE’s goal is to place them into “expedited removal,” a fast-track process where low-level immigration officers, not immigration judges, can order a person removed.

  • ICE agents used a variation of arrest tactics across the country. At the Varick Immigration Court in New York, ICE agents checked the documents of all people who left the court building, while at the Miami Immigration Court, agents inside courtrooms signaled to agents waiting in the hallways when a person’s case was dismissed. Once outside of the courtroom, the person was detained.
  • What changed? In January, ICE and the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which oversees the immigration courts, removed policies that limit arrests in and around immigration courts. These policies recognized that when immigration enforcement agents appear at or near court hearings, people are less likely to appear in court.
  • Why is this important? ICE confirmed it was targeting people to place them into expedited removal—a fast-track process that bypasses immigration judges. Now, attorneys, clients, and unrepresented noncitizens are scrambling to assess the risks of attending hearings. The resulting fear will likely deter attendance, which would result in absentia removal orders against noncitizens who do not appear in court.

DHS rapidly expands aggressive collaboration with state & local police

Here’s what we know: Over the past four months, the Trump administration has taken steps to rapidly expand agreements with state and local police agencies around the country to authorize local law enforcement to enforce federal immigration laws. In the past weeks, we have seen immigration raids in Tennessee, Florida, and Texas conducted by local or state police.

  • As of last week, ICE has signed 588 “287(g) agreements” across 40 states — five times as many agreements as just four months ago. The 287(g) program authorizes DHS to give state and local police the authority to perform certain immigration enforcement functions.
  • The Trump administration has resurrected the “Task Force Model” of the 287(g) program which was discontinued in 2012 due to demonstrated harmful impacts on community safety. This model allows local and state police to interrogate, arrest, detain, and process immigrants for removal proceedings without direction from ICE, with only minimal training on immigration law and procedure.
  • Unlike prior models of the 287(g) program that focused on state and local jails, now local police can interrogate and arrest non-citizens in-communities and outside of regular police interactions. As of last week, the Trump administration has initiated 285 “Task Force Model” 287(g) agreements across 29 states.
  • These agreements have a track record of leading to undermining police-community trust, increasing racial profiling, and decreasing public safety. We have already seen the impact of this in Tennessee, where last week a police chief expressed fear that a baby may have died because their caretaker was scared to call 911 because of his immigration status.
  • The Trump administration is also taking steps to deputize state police officers as federal officers like in Florida, where 100 state highway patrol officers are now considered U.S. federal marshals, giving them the authority to make immigration-related arrests.

As the Trump administration’s efforts to effectuate mass deportation intensifies, we can expect to see continued increases in unprecedented immigration enforcement policies and tactics.  These indiscriminate and scattershot efforts to increase non-citizen arrests, including thousands of people who pose no public safety threat, are indicative of an administration doubling down on its mass deportation agenda with little regard for the boundaries of law and policy and the impact on the country. With all these red flags in just one week, we can expect more to come.

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