Meanwhile, the Trump regime is expanding ICE's "expedited removal" authority to include all of the United States, meaning make sure you carry ID with you everywhere, or you now risk deportation.
The Trump administration announced on Monday it is expanding fast-track deportation regulations to include the removal of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the U.S. continuously for two years or more.
The change dramatically expands the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to quickly deport certain immigrants without any of the due-process protections granted to most other people, including the right to an attorney and to a hearing before a judge. It is set to go into effect Tuesday and is the latest escalation of the Trump administration's immigration crackdown.
"The effect of that change will be to enhance national security and public safety — while reducing government costs — by facilitating prompt immigration determinations," DHS said in a notice.
Additionally, DHS stated part of the purpose for the policy revision is to "harmonize" existing regulations to apply equally to undocumented immigrants who arrive by land and sea.
Currently, undocumented immigrants who cross into the U.S. by land can be deported without an immigration hearing if they are arrested within 100 miles of the border during the first 14 days after their arrival. Those who arrive by sea can be deported without legal proceedings if they are unable to prove they have been living in the U.S. for two years or more.
But under the latest proposal, all geographical limitations would be lifted and rapid removal proceedings would be applied to all undocumented immigrants who have been in the country for less than two years.
The move is also designed to mitigate a massive court backlog of immigration cases "and will reduce the significant costs to the government associated with full removal proceedings before an immigration judge." DHS said that as of June there were 909,034 pending immigration cases. It estimates the average removal proceeding for an undocumented immigrant not being held in detention "has been pending for more than two years before an immigration judge."
In early 2017, days after taking office, President Trump issued an executive orderdirecting DHS to expand the use of expedited removal. The order designated recent unauthorized arrivals as a top priority for deportation.
"We plan on challenging the change ... speedily," Anand Balakrishnan, Senior Staff Attorney for the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project told NPR.
Balakrishnan called the policy shift "extremely sweeping," and said it authorizes any Customs and Border Protection officer to determine whether a person has been in the U.S. the requisite amount of time to trigger legal proceedings.
"The only way out of that is for the person to affirmatively prove that they've been here for two years or more. To have that evidence on them at all times," he said. "It puts the burden on every noncitizen to prove their continuous presence."
He noted, deportations could happen within hours of a person's arrest.
"From what we know about the way expedited removals have been administered in the past, it's been rife with errors," Balakrishnan said. "U.S. citizens have been ordered deported" and in other cases, people who have lived in the country for more than a decade have also been ejected, he said.
Let that sink in.
"US citizens have been ordered deported" already and could now be "deported within hours of a person's arrest", and an "extremely sweeping" policy shift that "authorizes any Customs and Border Protection officer to determine" citizenship status. We already know that ICE is arresting US citizens.
An 18-year-old Dallas-born U.S. citizen has been in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for more than three weeks, his attorney says.
Now his family fears he may be deported.
Francisco Erwin Galicia was detained at a CBP checkpoint in Falfurrias on June 27, said Claudia Galan, his attorney.
Galicia was traveling with his 17-year-old brother Marlon Galicia and a group of friends from Edinburg where they live to Ranger College in North Texas for a soccer scouting event when they came upon a CBP checkpoint, said Sanjuana Galicia, his mother.
It was about 8 p.m. Marlon, who was born in Mexico and lacked legal status, had only been through a border checkpoint on school trips and had never been pressed to provide travel documents.
But this time was different, Marlon said. He had only a school ID. His brother was carrying only his Texas ID, which can only be obtained with a Social Security number.
“We were confident that we’d be able to pass. We were going to do something good for our futures,” he said. “I didn’t imagine this could happen and now I’m so sad that I’m not with my family,” Marlon said by phone from Reynosa, Mexico, where he is staying with his grandmother.
After two days in detention, Marlon signed a voluntary deportation form.
“I signed because I wanted to talk with my mom. Now, we just have to wait and see and hope that they release my brother,” Marlon said.
That's why the Trump regime wants a deal with Guatemala for asylum-seekers so badly. ICE picks you up, you don't have ID on you...or you do, and ICE just doesn't like you, you get disappeared to Central America and nobody knows you're gone.
You think a regime that separates kids from families and shrugs its shoulders when people point out thousands of these kids have no paper trail to get back to their families is somehow above "expedited deportation" of political enemies who are US citizens right out of the country and saying "Oh well, guess they're somebody else's problem"?
Needless to say, know your rights.
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