US announces plans to hasten deportations
WASHINGTON -- The Homeland Security Department announced yesterday that it would hasten deportations of illegal immigrants who are not Mexican or Canadian citizens. The department also said it would grant legal Mexican visitors up to one month, rather than just three days, to visit or do business in US communities close to the southern border.
Both changes will take effect immediately after the new rules are published in the Federal Register this week, said Asa Hutchinson, the department's undersecretary for border and transportation security.
''There is a concern that as we tighten the security of our ports of entry through biometric checks there will be more effort made by terrorists through our vast land borders," Hutchinson said. ''We recognize we have to secure those."
President Bush was to make a campaign swing today through Arizona and New Mexico, two battleground states in the presidential election. Hutchinson said the announcement was not timed to coincide with the visit.
The president had made immigration reform a priority, but put it on the back burner after the Sept. 11 attacks.
''In terms of reforming immigration policy, this is very small potatoes," said Gordon Hanson, professor of economics at the Center for US-Mexican Studies at University of California, San Diego. ''You are not doing anything to affect the legal status of the roughly 5 million Mexicans in the United States without a green card. I don't think this is for Mexico. I think this is for Hispanic voters of the United States. I think this is for Arizona and New Mexico."
Immigration advocates criticized the speeded-up removals.
''These immigrants will lose the right to have an immigration judge decide whether they should be deported," said Eleanor Acer, director of the Refugee Protection Program at Human Right First in New York. ''Instead, the power to issue this kind of order, which can have life and death consequences, will be entrusted to Border Patrol officers without any independent review."
Under the ''expedited removal" plan, illegal immigrants who have been in country less than 14 days and are arrested no more than 100 miles from the border will be returned to their home countries as soon as possible, after about eight days on average.
