Since President Donald Trump returned to the presidency and began reversing his predecessor’s immigration policies, advocates have complained that the current administration is denying “due process” to immigrants. Their real complaint is that for the first time in a long time, the Department of Homeland Security is deporting large numbers of aliens who have received due process and been ordered deported — not only because such removals are the natural consequence of violating the immigration laws, but because lawful deportations are essential to the credibility of our immigration system.
While it’s common to refer to the unauthorized population as “illegal aliens” or “undocumented noncitizens,” various categories of foreign nationals in the United States are subject to removal, including illegal entrants, temporary visitors (“nonimmigrants”) who violated or overstayed their entries, and lawful permanent residents (i.e., “green card holders”) who committed some act that rendered them removable.
In all except for a rare set of instances involving Mexican or Canadian nationals stopped at the borders and the ports, DHS must obtain removal orders to send any of those aliens home, and it’s in the course of those proceedings that removable aliens receive the “process” they are “due.”