A memo reveals the Trump administration is planning to deport immigrants to countries where they hold no citizenship, with little to no noti
Peter Wade at Rolling Stone:
A memo reveals the federal government is planning to deport immigrants to countries where they hold no citizenship, with as little as six hours’ notice and without any guarantees that they’ll be protected from torture or persecution when they get there. In the memo, obtained by The Washington Post, Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed plans for deportations following a Supreme Court decision that cleared a path for rapidly deporting immigrants to places to which they have no prior ties. If the plans are implemented, many more immigrants may soon find themselves sent to countries where they know no one and do not speak the language — and they will have little to no opportunity to legally challenge their removal before it takes place.
Lyons wrote that the Supreme Court’s ruling in June allowed immigration officials to “immediately” begin deporting immigrants to “alternative” countries, a term used to describe a country where the deportee is not a citizen. This policy will apply to immigrants who have final removal orders but whom a judge has ruled cannot be sent back to their home country because it would put them in danger. It will also apply to immigrants from countries with whom the U.S. does not have strong relations, like Cuba or China. How much notice an immigrant gets, the memo said, depends on where they are being sent. If the U.S. has received “diplomatic assurances” that immigrants sent to a particular country will be safe, and the State Department “believes those assurances to be credible,” then immigrants will be deported there without any prior notice.
If the immigrant is being sent to a place where the government has not secured such assurances, they could be deported there with hours’ notice. According to the memo, “in exigent circumstances” immigration officers could give immigrants as little as six hours’ notice that they were being deported somewhere they have no protections against prosecution or torture. In other cases, immigrants will get 24 hours’ notice.
Immigration officers will not ask each immigrant if they have concerns about being sent to another country, but immigrants who do express a fear of being sent to a third country will be screened within approximately 24 hours to see if they are eligible for humanitarian protection according to federal law and the Convention Against Torture, a United Nations convention that Congress ratified in 1994 that protects immigrants from being sent to a country where they could be subject to torture.
ICE released a dangerous and cruel new memo to deport immigrants to third countries with as little as 6 hours notice.
See Also:
Wonkette: New ICE Cruelty Memo Out: More Third-Country Kidnappings To Come!
Reuters, via USA Today: ICE may deport migrants to countries they aren't from with just six hours' notice
