During President Donald Trump’s first week in office, he signed 10 executive orders on immigration and issued a slew of edicts to carry out promises of mass deportations and border security. Some actions were felt immediately and others are being challenged in court.
During an Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) conversation on Reddit, U.S. immigration news editor Elliot Spagat discussed media’ latest coverage with Rebecca Santana, who covers the Department of Homeland Security, and Christopher Sherman, who is the news director for Mexico and Central America. They answered questions about Trump’s immigration announcements, including what’s been done already, what might happen in the next few months, and what might take longer to happen, if it ever does.
This Q&A has been adapted from the AMA on Reddit and edited for brevity and clarity. Read the full AMA in its entirety on Reddit.
Santana: Good question. It will be logistically challenging. About 1.4 million people have final orders of removal, meaning a judge ruled they can’t prove that they have the right to stay and has ordered them removed. About 660,000 people under immigration supervision have been convicted of a crime or are facing charges. Those two groups are the people that Trump officials have indicated are going to be early targets for deportation.
ICE has about 6,000 ERO officers. That stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations. They are the ones responsible for finding and removing people not eligible to stay here. So just comparing the numbers of cases to officers highlights the challenge for ERO. The government has tried to bring in other agencies like FBI, IRS, DEA to help with immigration enforcement, and they’re encouraging cooperation from state and local law enforcement to basically beef up their ranks. But immigration law is complicated and ERO officers are ultimately the ones most knowledgeable about it.
Sherman: First, a note on terminology — Rebecca shared this helpful distinction between refugees and asylum seekers: Refugees are a distinct category under U.S. law, different than asylum-seekers and other migrants who come directly to the U.S. border hoping to be admitted into the U.S. Refugees have to be located outside of the U.S. when they apply to come to the country. They have to demonstrate that they were persecuted or fear persecution due to race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group.
Deals were worked out during the first Trump administration with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to send asylum seekers to those countries from the U.S. to apply for protection. But deals reached on U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s trip last week appear to go beyond that to include any deportees, not just asylum seekers.
El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said during Rubio’s visit that El Salvador will take convicted prisoners from the United States, including U.S. citizens, for a fee. That extraordinary offer got most of the attention, but Rubio also said El Salvador agreed to accept deportees of any nationality and hold them in its prisons.
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