The government may deport someone if they can prove that person violated the terms of their visa or legal status. This includes people who entered the country illegally, overstayed their work or student visa or violated the terms of their green card, including by committing a crime. In addition, the government can deport anyone they suspect is a threat to national security or public safety. Deportation is a complicated issue, and if you’re facing deportation, you should talk to an experienced immigration attorney as soon as possible.
NPR spoke with attorneys and experts, and reviewed government documents to break down the process of deportation. Here are the basic steps in the process:
First, an individual must be placed into what is called “removal proceedings.” This is when ICE formally accuses someone of being removable — this could include having no visa or entry permit, overstaying their stay under a nonimmigrant visa, failing to inform the government about a change in address or even having committed a crime. The individual then goes through a legal process to determine if they qualify for relief from removal and, if not, an order of removal is issued.
A final step in the process is physically repatriating the person to their home country. For individuals from countries that ICE cannot fly to voluntarily (including Mexico, Russia and India), this generally means traveling by bus or airplane. ICE’s repatriation program, ICE Air, is run by contractors who provide planes and pilots. It has a number of safety issues that have been reported to NPR, including several crashes and one accident in which 115 shackled people had to escape from a burning aircraft in less than two minutes.
Deportation on a mass scale would require extensive cooperation between federal, state and local law enforcement. Local law enforcement officers would have to patrol communities to identify and arrest unauthorized immigrants, many of whom do not pose a serious threat to the community. This would require significant additional resources and would divert officers from other responsibilities such as responding to natural disasters or policing criminal activity.
Immigration agents would also need to raid and sweep through homes, apartment buildings, workplaces and other locations in a wide geographic area. These operations would likely rely on racial and ethnic profiling, and they could ensnare U.S. citizens and other legal residents, as well.
Lastly, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars in federal, state and local tax revenues and trillions in lost economic output to remove millions of people from the United States. Ultimately, it is unlikely that the government will be able to successfully carry out a deportation on such a massive scale without significant negative economic and social impacts.