Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is being accused of trying to deport dead people to meet a daily immigration arrest quota set by the White House.
Since the 1970s, immigration judges have used a maneuver called ‘administrative closure’ to ease the massive backlog and prioritize more urgent cases. The cases aren’t dismissed, they’re just delayed and gives the court and the migrant time to pursue other forms of relief such as a hardship waiver or deferred status.
Now, the Trump administration is asking judges to reopen several of these cases without checking the migrant’s immigration status or if they are even alive.
Patricia Corrales, an immigration attorney, told the Los Angeles Times that she has received nearly a dozen notices including one about a client that died.
Corrales explained that seven years ago a judge administratively closed deportation proceedings for construction worker Helario Romero Arciniega after he was severely beaten and qualified for a visa for crime victims.
Earlier this year, the government filed to reopen his case even though Romero Arciniega died six months ago.
Another one of her clients, DACA recipient Jesus Adan Rico, is still alive but his original attorney had died, leaving his daughter to notify her father’s old client that his case was reopened.
“They don’t do their homework,” Corrales said of the government lawyers. “They’re very negligent in the manner in which they’re handling these motions to re-calendar.”
Attorneys told the LA Times that the government is trying to overwhelm the courts and immigration lawyers by reviving old cases. In fact, some lawyers are already reporting delays in their ability to file their opposition motions because the court is so overwhelmed.
Mariela Caravetta, an immigration attorney, said the government is flooding the immigration courts in an effort to meet its deportation quotas.
The LA Times noted that if lawyers don’t succeed in opposing those motions, the immigrants may end up back in a courthouse where they could be arrested by ICE agents and deported.
“People aren’t getting due process,” Caravetta said. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”
Asked why the government is reopening decades old immigration cases, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin blamed Joe Biden.
“Biden chose to release millions of illegal aliens, including criminals, into the country and used prosecutorial discretion to indefinitely delay their cases and allow them to illegally remain in the United States,” she told the LA Times. “Now, President Trump and Secretary Noem are following the law and resuming these illegal aliens’ removal proceedings and ensuring their cases are heard by a judge.”
In May, White House adviser Stephen Miller said ICE agents would seek to arrest 3,000 or more immigrants per day to fill Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
“Under President Trump’s leadership, we are looking to set a goal of a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every day,” Miller told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.
But, in court last week the administration denied any such quota existed.
“DHS has confirmed that neither ICE leadership nor its field offices have been directed to meet any numerical quota or target for arrests, detentions, removals, field encounters, or any other operational activities that ICE or its components undertake in the course of enforcing federal immigration law,” a DOJ lawyer said.
