President Donald Trump’s administration is moving to get rid of migrants who were allowed into the nation temporarily under Biden administration parole programs.
In a memo signed on Thursday by the acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, officials were given instructions on how to use powers to quickly deport the migrants that were previously given only for encounters at the southern border in certain circumstances under the Biden-Harris regime, The New York Times reported.
It also seems to provide officials with the authority to expel migrants from two significant Biden-era programs that have permitted over a million people to enter the country temporarily.
“Those programs — an app called CBP One that migrants could use to try to schedule appointments to enter the United States, and an initiative that let in certain migrants fleeing Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti — were key pillars of the Biden administration’s efforts to discourage illegal entries by allowing certain legal pathways. Immigrant advocates also worried that the memo could apply to Afghan and Ukrainian immigrants brought to the United States under separate programs,” the report said.
“The decision indicates that President Trump will try to use every facet of the immigration enforcement apparatus to crack down on a system he has long said has been abused, and that he intends to target not just those who sneaked across the border but even those who followed previously authorized pathways to enter,” the Times added.
The migrants, who are often from dangerous nations, were granted a two-year period known as “parole” to stay in the United States legally, but the memo appears to allow for them to be deported sooner if not immediately.
Republicans have criticized the two Biden programs, likening them to a quasi-legal way to facilitate illegal immigration as approximately 1.4 million migrants utilized these programs to enter the country under Biden’s watch.
“Here’s an idea: Don’t fly millions of illegals aliens from failed states thousands of miles away into small towns across the American Heartland,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said on X in September, in criticizing the programs.
Former Biden officials were quick to criticize the memo and its guidance.
“In addition to raising serious legal concerns, subjecting people who played by the rules to a summary deportation process is an outrageous and unprecedented betrayal,” former Homeland Security Department senior attorney for Biden, Tom Jawetz, said.
“American communities have opened their hearts and homes for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Afghanistan and Ukraine,” Justice Action Center Director Karen Tumlin claimed. “Punishing people who did everything the government asked, and many of whom had U.S.-based sponsors, to this summary deportation procedure is appalling.”
The American Civil Liberties Union is already planning to challenge Trump’s order.
“The Trump administration wants to use this illegal policy to fuel its mass deportation agenda and rip communities apart,” ACLU attorney Anand Balakrishnan said. “Expanding expedited removal would give Trump a cheat code to circumvent due process and the Constitution, and we are again here to fight it.”
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine C. Huffman issued the memo on Thursday, which started the phaseout of the two Biden programs.
“In the memo, he directed ICE officials to analyze immigrants the agency is ‘aware of’ who can be deported under the new fast deportations, which sidestep immigration courts, and consider whether they should be removed from the country. The memo suggests that officials prioritize immigrants who have been in the country longer than a year but who have not applied for asylum,” the Times report said.
“As part of that, the memo says that officials can, if necessary, decide to move to strip parole, a form of temporary legal status. Migrants brought under the two Biden-era programs — as well as other initiatives involving Afghans and Ukrainians — are in the country under that specific form of temporary status,” it said.
If the migrants are already in the deportation process, which can take years to complete, their cases can be terminated, and their deportations can be expedited, per the memo.
The memo also instructs ICE to target migrants who have overstayed the two-year period on the program.
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