ICE Memo Details Plans to Ramp Up Deportations to Third Countries

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.

“It puts thousands of lives at risk of persecution and torture,” Trina Realmuto, executive director of the National Immigration Litigation Alliance, told The Post.

All of this is part of the administration’s plans for mass deportations. Although Trump promised during the campaign to deport criminals — “the worst of the worst” — recent ICE data reveals that 72 percent of immigration detainees have zero criminal convictions. The government appears to be moving full steam ahead on deportations even though public opinion has recently pivoted, with one poll showing more Americans oppose than support Trump’s immigration policies by a 27-point margin.

Already, the Trump administration has been deporting immigrants to third countries, and it seems those numbers will only increase after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Hundreds of Venezuelans are being detained at CECOT, a notorious prison in El Salvador known for inhumane and torturous conditions. Eight men from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Sudan, and Vietnam have been sent to war-torn South Sudan. The administration also illegally deported Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego García, to his home country in violation of a judge’s order. Abrego, who said he was tortured while in El Salvador, returned to the U.S. in June because the Supreme Court ordered the administration to bring him back. However, the government has recently considered sending him to a third country before he is able to stand trial on criminal charges.