Trump Seeks to Fast-Track Deportations of Hundreds of Thousands

The Washington Post

14:48 JST, March 1, 2025

The Trump administration has directed federal officers to identify immigrants who can be rapidly removed from the United States without a court hearing as part of its quest to boost deportations, according to an internal memorandum viewed by The Washington Post.

The memo circulated at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Feb. 18 details the agency’s latest strategy to accelerate removals and identifies their potential targets. More than 1 million migrants who were admitted to the United States through an array of initiatives during President Joe Biden’s administration could be flagged for “expedited removal” proceedings, though officials have instructed immigration officers to pore over the nearly 8 million deportation cases on their dockets to find more.

Migrants could be speedily deported if they crossed the border illegally, were waved into the country on parole or with a notice to report to immigration authorities, and have not applied for asylum, the memo said. Immigrants who arrived legally through a port of entry also may be targeted if they lacked immigration documents or misrepresented themselves, the memo said.

Lawyers said this group could include Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others who entered legally through a Biden parole program, which President Donald Trump terminated, if they lack any other immigration status. Migrants who booked appointments through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to enter through a border checkpoint also could be swept out of the country.

“This is allowing ICE to go after a lot of people that are here, that have been here for a long time,” said Paul Hunker, former ICE chief counsel in Dallas, who said the fast-track deportation process historically has been meant for newer arrivals, not people who have deep roots in their communities.

ICE did not respond to questions about the memo, which was sent from the assistant director for field operations to immigration officers nationwide.

The memo comes as Trump administration officials scramble to fulfill his campaign promise to oversee a historic mass deportation of millions of immigrants. Those efforts have fallen short in part because longtime residents are entitled to court hearings that can take years to materialize, so Trump officials are increasingly targeting people who can be quickly removed, such as criminals, those with final removal orders or people with temporary protections like parole that officials can swiftly rescind.

Recent arrivals who were released into the country via parole are in such a tenuous position that the month before the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration warned them to apply for asylum or permanent residency, if eligible, to avoid being deported.

Expedited removal was created in a 1996 law that sought to deter illegal immigration. For most of its history, it has been deployed on the southern border with Mexico to quickly remove thousands of migrants caught within 100 miles of the boundary shortly after their arrival. Migrants can plead their case to immigration officers if they fear their lives will be in danger if they return home. If they lose, their only recourse is a cursory review by an immigration judge.

After Trump took office, his administration immediately expanded “expedited removal” from the southern border to the rest of the United States to target people who have been here for two years or less. Trump made a similar attempt during his first term in 2019 but was blocked by a federal judge.

But advocates said the Feb. 18 ICE memo goes even further than the expansion into the interior because it targets people who arrived via parole, most of them legally, even if they have been in the United States longer than two years.

The memo says immigration officers may pursue someone for expedited removal, even after the two-year time limit, if they are “arriving aliens,” such as those who showed up at a border checkpoint without immigration documents and were released into the United States.

“There is no time limit on the ability to process such aliens for ER,” the memo said, referring to expedited removal.

In a separate example of how far the administration will go to increase its deportation numbers, the memo said immigrants who won protection from being deported because a judge ruled they could be persecuted or tortured in their home country should be considered for expulsion to a different country.

Lawyers say there is no guarantee that third country would protect the immigrant from being deported to the country they fled.

“This is an effort to really circumvent the most precious aspect of the asylum laws, which is we do not send people back to countries where their life or freedom would be threatened,” said Ira Kurzban, a Miami immigration lawyer and the author of a widely used legal sourcebook.

The memo also encourages immigration officers to rearrest immigrants they have had to release in the past because they could not deport them, typically because their homelands refused to take them back. Trump has threatened sanctions against such countries, and the memo says the administration has made “significant gains” in carrying out deportations.

Legal challenges to the memo are expected, and the administration faces logistical hurdles such as discovering where immigrants are living now and parsing whether they have filed applications for a permanent legal immigration status.

But the move is jarring advocates for immigrants because expedited proceedings move so quickly, and it is difficult to locate immigrants and defend them.

“The use of expedited removal at the border for recent arrivals has resulted in countless errors, but expanding a system that lacks due process to longtime residents in the interior of the country is problematic at a whole other level,” said American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt, who in January filed a lawsuit on behalf of immigrant advocates seeking to stop Trump from using expedited removal in the U.S. interior. “Providing due process is built into the fabric of our country but is step by step being eliminated by this administration.”