US: Newly Released Files Show Fast-Track to Deportation

Human Rights Watch reports that, two years after the implementation of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), newly released government records reveal U.S. immigration agencies’ efforts in 2019 to rapidly deport thousands of people from the United States through the Electronic Nationality Verification (ENV) program.  The records reveal details about how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its component agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), touted the ENV program to expedite the repatriation of many Central Americans without obtaining travel documents from their home country, a process that traditionally involved contact with foreign consulates. US and international law give foreign nationals a right to contact their consulate when arrested.  The American Immigration Council, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Human Rights Watch, and the law firm Winston & Strawn LLP obtained the documents through a lawsuit to compel the release of records about the MPP.  The documents include a 2019 DHS memo describing how the governments in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras agreed to pilot ENVs.

KJ