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The government of the United States is expected to launch an operation next week to send court documents to 78, 000 immigrants who were not processed for deportation after crossing the border between the United States and Mexico without authorization this year, as reported by CBS News based on two people informed about the plan.
As of Monday, U.S. immigration authorities will send packages of legal documents that will instruct migrants, many of them families with children, to appear for court hearings before immigration judges, who will determine whether newcomers will be able to stay in the country, they said. sources to CBS News.
The plan of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) called “Operation Horizon”, is designed to place tens of thousands of migrants who received processing near the southern border in deportation proceedings. The agency will send migrants “notices to appear”, as well as other documents.
Usually to migrants who are released after crossing the southern border, rather than being promptly deported or detained, are provided with “notices to appear”, which oblige them to see an immigration judge who can order your deportation if you do not show up for court appointments.
However, as of March, US border officials did not issue notices to appear to tens of thousands of migrants who were released , citing limited resources due to a sharp increase in migration.
Instead, these migrants received “notices to inform” or instructions to report to an ICE office at your respective destination within 60 days, to continue processing.
Issuing a notice to appear takes between 60 and 90 minutes, while a notice to report can be prepared in 10 minutes, according to an internal government document. Unlike a notice to appear, a notice to report does not place migrants in removal proceedings within the immigration court system.
The plan to send notices to tens of thousands of migrants next week has raised some concerns among immigrant advocates who believe that many of the legal packages may be sent to addresses where the intended recipients no longer live.
Representatives from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to requests from CBS News for comment on next week’s operation.
For stop their deportation cases, migrants can ask judges to grant them asylum or other forms of immigration relief.
If their applications are denied , they can be deported or they can appeal the judge’s decision. Immigration courts currently have a backlog of more than 1.4 million pending cases, according to Syracuse University researchers.