The Senate budget deal will reportedly include at least an unprecedented $175 billion for immigration and border enforcement, nearly six times the latest annual budget of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) combined. While exact details are yet to be set, in order to pay for this staggering amount, the plan calls for sweeping cuts to essential programs, including potentially Medicaid, Social Security, food benefits, and more.
|
From his first day in office, President Trump made clear that part of his immigration agenda was to strip legal protections from people who currently qualify for them, rendering them deportable as “illegal immigrants.” In his first weeks, the administration has made a few opening moves in that effort, while leaving the door open to future action. The result has been confusion and dread, as communities (and attorneys) try to figure out what the current policies are and when the other shoe will drop.
|
Yeisvi was no older than 11 years old when she was separated from her mother, Vilma Carrillo, at the Arizona border. Ms. Carrillo was detained in Arizona and moved to a detention center in Georgia while her daughter was placed in foster care. Yeisvi was a U.S. citizen by birth and her mother was an asylum-seeker from Guatemala. Ms. Carrillo fled to the U.S. from her abusive husband. She was forcibly separated from her daughter at the United States-Mexico border, which lasted for more than 200 days as she appealed her deportation order. Because Yeisvi was a U.S. citizen, she could not stay with her mother, who was detained in an immigrant detention center.
|
Expedited removal is a process by which low-level immigration officers can summarily remove certain noncitizens from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge. Undocumented immigrants placed in expedited removal proceedings are entitled to access the asylum system if they express fear of persecution, torture, or of returning to their home country.
Created in 1996 as part of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, the expedited removal statute applies to noncitizens who arrive at a port of entry and to some noncitizens who enter without having been admitted or paroled (those who “enter without inspection”) and who have not been continuously present in the United States for at least two years.
Read more: Fact Sheet on Expedited Removal
|
