The Perils of Expedited Removal: How Fast-Track Deportations Jeopardize Asylum Seekers
President Trump issued the Border Security executive order, which, among other things, proposes in Section 11 to expand “expedited removal.” Previously, the Executive Branch had limited expedited removal — a summary removal process without judicial review — to noncitizens within 100 miles to the border to the entire country; in addition, such removal would be expanded to people who had been in the country for less than 14 days to two years, which raises serious Due Process concerns.
This American Immigration Council report shows through the use of original testimony that the government’s reliance on “fast-track” deportation methods, such as expedited removal, in conjunction with detention often results in disadvantaging one of the most vulnerable groups of non-citizens currently in the U.S. immigration system: women and their children held in detention centers in rural, isolated locations in Texas and Pennsylvania. Accounts from women and children detained at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, the country’s largest family detention center, illustrate the many obstacles a detained asylum seeker must overcome in order to obtain a meaningful day in court. The authors drew from a database of thousands of case files to identify families who experienced one or more of the challenges outlined in this paper. Although many of the families whose stories are highlighted in this report were ultimately able to forestall immediate deportation with the assistance of legal counsel, all of them faced serious obstacles accessing the asylum process. Detained asylum seekers encounter numerous challenges, including the following problems detailed in this report.
KJ