A foreign citizen is deported when the government of a nation state expels him or her. This can happen for a variety of reasons. For example, an immigrant may be arrested and found guilty of a crime that makes him or her deportable. In addition, many people are removed from the United States because they do not have legal status here and haven’t applied for asylum or some other relief. Deportation is a serious matter that can have long-term consequences for families and the community as a whole.
Whether or not a non-citizen is deported depends on a number of factors, including how the person came to the attention of immigration authorities, the type of violation they committed, and whether or not they have any family members who are US citizens or legal residents. Fortunately, the law provides a way to avoid deportation in many cases. In some cases, deportation can even be reversed or stopped altogether if the person has family ties in the United States and has a good reason to remain here.
The most common way that a non-citizen ends up being deported is to first be placed into removal proceedings. This happens when ICE (the agency that enforces immigration laws) formally accuses him or her of being removable from the United States. The person then has a chance to defend himself or herself in court.
This process can be quick for cases that qualify for expedited removal (which is usually done at a port of entry or a border crossing) or for cases where an alien has been ordered deported in the past and has repeatedly violated his or her visa status. However, in most cases, the process can take months or years to reach a final decision through the courts.
Those who are removed from the country are often flown home by an ICE unit called “ICE Air Operations.” Those who are being deported to Mexico or Central America are usually taken directly to those countries while those going to other places are transported on regular flights to those locations.
If an illegal alien is determined to be deportable, he or she will have a master calendar hearing where he or she will discuss with the judge and the U.S. government attorney whether or not the charges against him or her are true and whether he or she has any realistic basis on which to claim eligibility for relief from removal.
The deportation of parents and other family members has major physical, emotional, developmental and economic consequences for the children in those families. A recent study surveyed over 16,740 parents and their children, finding that those children who were separated from a parent because of deportation were more likely to experience educational problems than were their siblings who did not face this challenge. This is especially true when the child is forced to transition from a two-parent household to a single-parent household, with limited or no supervision by another adult.