Government rushes to reopen years-old removal proceedings to boost Trump’s mass deportation agenda
Thousands of immigrants who have legally lived and worked in the United States for years have assumed they would be protected against their removal from the country after their cases were frozen.
But the Trump administration is stripping immigrants of their legal status and reopening removal proceedings as the Department of Homeland Security expands its mass deportation machine.
Homeland Security isn’t even checking to see whether these immigrants targeted for deportation are even alive, let alone legally protected from removal, according to California immigration attorneys speaking to The Los Angeles Times.
An immigration judge had closed removal proceedings against construction worker Helario Romero Arciniega, who was severely beaten with a metal sprinkler head and qualified for a special visa for victims of crime.
Earlier this year, the government reopened removal proceedings against him. He died in January, according to the LA County Coroner’s Office.
“They don’t do their homework,” immigration attorney Patricia Corrales told the newspaper. “They’re very negligent in the manner in which they’re handling these motions to re-calendar.”
Corrales, a former Immigration and Naturalization Service and Homeland Security attorney, told The Independent that the government’s recent motions to recalendar removal proceedings that were administratively closed — and not active — are “boilerplate motions” and “DHS doesn’t do their homework” and are “lazy or negligent in the information they provide to the court.”
“My client was in removal proceedings before he passed away. He was alive when his removal proceedings were administratively closed,” she added.
DHS filed a motion to recalendar on July 10 and “failed to mention an important detail,” she told The Independent.
“So, DHS was negligent in failing to even do some basic research to determine whether my client was alive or moved or anything,” she said.
In another case, Adan Rico, a new father studying to be an HVAC technician, said he had no idea the government restarted deportation proceedings against him.
His original lawyer had died, and “if it wasn’t for his daughter calling, I would have never found out my case was reopened,” Rico told The LA Times. “The Department of Homeland Security never sent me anything.”
A statement from Homeland Security assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Donald Trump’s administration is “once again implementing the rule of law” and accused former President Joe Biden of indefinitely delaying cases that left “criminals” stay in the country illegally.
“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,” she said in a statement shared with The Independent.
Rico, however, is among immigrants with removal protections under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which doesn’t come up for renewal until 2027, according to Corrales.
The Trump administration has effectively “de-legalized” more than 1 million immigrants since January.
Thousands of people who are following immigration law — including those showing up for their court-ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement check-ins, immigration court hearings and U.S. Customs and Immigration Services appointments — have become easy targets for arrests.
Unlike federal district courts, immigration court judges operate under the direction of the attorney general’s office.
When immigrants have appeared for their hearings, Homeland Security attorneys have moved for the cases to be dismissed, while the Executive Office for Immigration Review at the Department of Justice has issued guidance to judges to grant those motions on the spot.
Those quick dismissals mean immigrants can then be subject to removal, leading to scenes of masked ICE agents dragging people out of courtrooms across the country.
Those arrests have been condemned by immigrants’ rights groups and attorneys as a “corruption” of the courts, “transforming them from forums of justice into cogs in a mass deportation apparatus,” American Immigration Lawyers Association president Kelli Stump said earlier this year.
“The expansion of expedited removal strips more people of their right to a hearing before a judge — as our laws promise,” she added.
In April, Sirce E. Owen, acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, issued a memo calling the suspension of removal proceedings “de facto amnesty program with benefits” because immigrants can still have authorization and deportation protections.
Owen stated that, as of April, roughly 379,000 cases were still administratively closed in immigration courts, adding to the system’s backlog of 4 million cases.
A spokesperson for the Executive Office for Immigration Review confirmed to The Independent that immigration courts must first receive the underlying initial motion before accepting a response to that motion.
Immigration attorney Edgardo Quintanilla told The LA Times that he has received 40 cases, some dating back to the 2010s. “There is always the fear that they may be arrested when they go to the court,” he said. “With everything going on, it is a reasonable fear.”
Mariela Caravetta told the newspaper that roughly 30 clients have been targeted with new motions from the government reopening their cases in the last month, some of which have been frozen for a decade.
By law, she has only 10 days to reply, forcing her to try to track down clients who have since moved.
“People aren’t getting due process,” Caravetta said. “It’s very unfair to the client because these cases have been sleeping for 10 years.”
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