The Trump administration is giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials the power to quickly deport migrants who were allowed into the country temporarily under Biden-era programmes, according to an internal government memo obtained by The New York Times.
The memo, signed on Thursday night by the acting head of the Homeland Security Department, offers ICE officials a road map on how to use expansive powers that were long reserved only for encounters at the southern border to quickly remove migrants. It also appears to give the officials the ability to expel migrants in two major Biden-era programmes that have allowed more than a million people to enter the country temporarily.
Those programmes — an app called CBP One that migrants could use to try to schedule appointments to enter the US, and an initiative that let in certain migrants fleeing Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti — were key pillars of the Biden administration’s efforts to discourage illegal entries by allowing certain legal pathways. Immigrant advocates also worried that the memo could apply to Afghan and Ukrainian immigrants brought to the US under separate programmes.
The decision indicates that Trump will try to use every facet of the immigration enforcement apparatus to crack down on a system he has long said has been abused, and that he intends to target not just those who sneaked across the border but even those who followed previously authorised pathways to enter.
It is also sure to raise fears among a large class of immigrants, many of whom had fled desperate conditions, believed that they were in the country legally and might be afraid to return to their often-dangerous home countries.
Both of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s signature programmes had faced heavy criticism from Republicans, including Trump administration officials, as a way to facilitate illegal immigration through the guise of a government programme. The migrants were given a grant to stay in the country for up to two years under a temporary legal status known as “parole”. The memo appears to allow for their deportation, regardless of whether they have reached the end of that legal status or still have time remaining.
In total, around 1.4 million migrants entered the country through the two programmes since the beginning of 2023.
A senior homeland security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the effort rested on Trump’s belief that Biden’s immigration programmes were never lawful and that migrants in the country unlawfully should be removed quickly.
Stephen Miller, a White House deputy chief of staff and the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies, has made clear that he opposed both programmes.
“In addition to raising serious legal concerns, subjecting people who played by the rules to a summary deportation process is an outrageous and unprecedented betrayal,” said Tom Jawetz, a senior lawyer in the Homeland Security Department in the Biden administration.
Trump ordered the agency to shut down the Biden-era programmes on Monday. That same day, Benjamine C. Huffman, the acting homeland security secretary, issued a separate memo ordering the phaseout of all such programmes. On Tuesday, the administration widened the deportation powers. On Thursday, Huffman provided additional guidance to the agency on the two key decisions and how they interact with each other.
In the memo, he directed ICE officials to analyse immigrants the agency is “aware of” who can be deported under the new fast deportations, which sidestep immigration courts, and consider whether they should be removed from the country. The memo suggests that officials prioritise immigrants who have been in the country longer than a year.
New York Times News Service