There is no specific date when President Donald Trump's government will restart its accelerated deportation policy, after the Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C. Circuit, endorsed them, but experts remind undocumented immigrants that they could be at risk of being detained and processed under these guidelines.

Harold Solis, co-legal director of Make the Road New York, the organization leading the lawsuit in favor of immigrants, explained about the detentions and the so-called two-year rule, that is, strictly speaking, accelerated deportations should apply to these people, but there are doubts about when those two years are considered.

“This requirement that nothing else applies to people who have spent less than two years here is itself written into the law,” he said. “What this administration wants to do is use it not only against those people, but also against anyone who is here in the United States and who may be more than two years old.”

In the podcast 'El Diario Sin Límites', Solís shared that there have been cases of people who have lived in the United States for more than two years, but they did not have elements to defend themselves and entered the deportation process.

“We have seen cases where, because the [deportation] process is so accelerated, everything is very fast, there is no lawyer who is there, there is no court [hearing],” he indicated.

He added that the main problem with the rules applied by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is that an agent detains the person and even if the arrested person shows some evidence that he or she has been living in the country for more than two years, the same agent – ​​or a supervisor – will be the one who reviews and determines such evidence.

That is, with this policy, ICE agents become executors of the detention, evaluate evidence and make the final decision, there is no intervention by a judge or an impartial third party.

“It is the same officer, many times, who is making the decision,” said Solís.

Recommendations for immigrants

Solís, who is a lawyer, recommended immigrants plan an action plan with their family in case they face detention and deportation proceedings.

“First, I recommend that, if you have not done so yet, you should have something, a little box, a place at home, where you can quickly have documents that can show that the person has been here for more than two years,” he said.

He added that the document could be a credential issued by a state authority. He recalled the case of a person detained in New York, who showed his driver's license and that was key in his defense.

“If the person has an ID, whether from the city, the state, whatever, something like that to prove that they have been here, that is very important, that is something that can easily be given to a family member, so that they can give it to a lawyer,” he added.

He added that undocumented immigrants should seriously consider asking for legal advice to know their options, since a lawyer can evaluate the particular case.

"Talk to a lawyer. We are living in a time where many things are happening in the area of ​​immigration, many changes, sometimes negative, and it is not a bad idea to have – like when visiting a doctor – get a check-up to see where things are," Solís recommended.

Which immigrants are most at risk?

A report from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) found that at least 622,000 immigrants could be at immediate risk of expedited deportation, since they entered the US less than two years ago and are easily located by ICE.

“Based on the most recent data available from DHS, MPI estimates that 622,000 undocumented immigrants entered the country between May 2024 and May 2026,” the report adds. “The majority entered using the CBP One app or a humanitarian parole program, both part of the [Joe] Biden administration's strategy to respond to the record number of arrivals at the US-Mexico border.”

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