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Although during his presidential campaign President Joe Biden promised not to deport illegals in his first days in office, the new Democratic administration has already expelled hundreds of immigrants.
Although a federal judge ordered President Biden not to implement the 100-day moratorium on deportations, the ruling did not require the government to schedule the deportations of hundreds of immigrants. Had the will existed, it wouldn’t have scheduled any removals.
An AP news agency report revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) recently deported immigrants from at least three countries: 15 to Jamaica last Thursday and 269 to Guatemala and Honduras on Friday. The news agency explains that there were more deportation flights scheduled for this Monday, February 1st.
“In the border city of El Paso, Texas, immigration authorities on Friday deported a woman who witnessed the massacre of 22 people at a Walmart in 2019. She had agreed to testify against the attacker and has met with local prosecutors, according to her lawyers,” AP notes.
According to AP, the woman was stopped while driving because a brake light was not working on her vehicle, then transferred to ICE, which deported her before she could contact her attorney.
“Rosa pleaded guilty in 2018 to driving while intoxicated and was subsequently released by ICE, suggesting that authorities had determined during the Trump administration that the woman did not pose a threat to the public,” AP reviews.
The question then remains as to why the woman was deported and why the Biden administration keeps scheduling immigrant removals.
Hundreds of deportees: Biden’s unkept promise
During the presidential campaign, both Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris were outspoken in their opposition to the Trump Administration’s immigration priorities. However, at the beginning of his administration he has already deported almost 300 people.
Honduran officials confirmed that 131 people were aboard a deportation flight that landed on Friday. Another flight that arrived in Guatemala that same day brought 138 people, and an estimated 30 more people arrived Monday, local officials said.
Two legal experts told the AP that regardless of the judge’s order on the moratorium on deportations, ICE could release immigrants with deportation orders, keep people in detention or otherwise delay the deportation process.
Biden is expected to issue a series of immigration-related executive orders on Tuesday, February 2. It is estimated that these orders will include the formation of a task force to reunite families separated during the Trump administration.
Will Biden follow Obama’s footsteps?
Biden, who assembled an executive cabinet similar to Obama’s, could end up following in the footsteps of the former Democratic president. According to the figures, Obama deported more immigrants than any other U.S. president.
The former Democratic president expelled 2.7 million immigrants from the country. Those numbers leave Obama as the president who has deported the most immigrants in the history of the country, almost as many as the combined sum of all his predecessors in the 20th century.
Sabrina Martín Rondon is a Venezuelan journalist. Her source is politics and economics. She is a specialist in corporate communications and is committed to the task of dismantling the supposed benefits of socialism // Sabrina Martín Rondon es periodista venezolana. Su fuente es la política y economía. Es especialista en comunicaciones corporativas y se ha comprometido con la tarea de desmontar las supuestas bondades del socialismo