By Melinda Rolls
The Trump administration has moved swiftly to carry out a series of executive orders on immigration that are intended to crack down on illegal immigration and secure the border. Those orders, though, may be more about instilling fear in immigrants to force them out of the country rather than using Immigration and Customs Enforcement to remove them.
That’s the take of Lauris Wren, clinical law professor at Hofstra University and director of its asylum clinic. She examined Trump’s immigration strategy during a talk at Hofstra’s Maurice A. Deane School of Law Feb. 25.
Expedited removals
Wren said she and other immigration attorneys are most concerned about the administration’s plan to expand the use of expedited removals. Expedited removal allows low-level immigration officers to rapidly deport undocumented non-citizens if they cannot prove they have been in the U.S. for more than two years. An exception is made for individuals who express fear of returning to their home country, granting them the right to determine their eligibility to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Wren said her concern lies in the rapid process, which may lead to unjustified deportations. Because of the swiftness of expedited removals without additional legal oversight, detainees may be unable to prove they do not meet the criteria for expedited removal.
“Any of these procedures where there is not traditional or other reliable oversight are very worrisome to civil right advocates,” Wren said.
Flourish graphic by Melinda Rolls/Long Island Advocate
In 2018, the average amount of time a person spent in custody before being deported under expedited removal was 11.4 days, compared with the 51.5 days for those in customary removal proceedings.
Historically, expedited removal has been used 100 miles from the border. However, the statute does allow it to be employed throughout the country. While the Trump administration says it plans to extend the use of expedited removal, Wren emphasized that his last administration made similar claims.
“The last Trump administration said they were going to use the full extended use of expedited removal,” she said. “It didn’t really happen. We weren’t seeing people around Long Island being picked up via expedited removal.”
Instilling fear
Wren emphasized that one of Trump’s primary strategies is to use the media to instill fear in immigrants through the appearance of mass deportations. However, she explained that the media does not always align with the actual number of deportations taking place.
During his first month in office, Trump deported 37,660 people, far less than the monthly average of 57,000 in the last full year of Joe Biden’s administration, according to an analysis by Reuters.
“One thing the administration is very good at is playing into the media,” Wren said. “We’re actually not deporting huge numbers of people right now…but everyone’s perception is that there are massive raids going on.”
Wren suggested that the administration used the media by proposing to confine migrants at the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where terrorism suspects were—and are now—held. As news of the detained migrants’ confinement spread, most were swiftly deported to their home countries.
Wren said fear was also instilled through family separations at the border during Trump’s previous administration. “The idea was that if we take people’s children away from them, and don’t give them back, they won’t come,” she said. “If we can be so cruel that it’s worse than an environment where they might be killed, then we get rid of the problem.”
The number of families still separated is unclear. In May 2024, however, The Washington Post reported 1,400 children remained separated from their families.
