Global and Local Challenges to Refugee Protection

Abstract

On October 12, 2017, the United States Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, took a short trip from Pennsylvania Avenue across the Potomac to Falls Church, Virginia. The Attorney General went to Falls Church to address personnel of the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency that administers the United States’ immigration courts. The Attorney General's chosen topic for the day was “the fraud and abuse in our asylum system.” “Over the years,” the Attorney General argued, “Congress has rationally passed legislation designed to create an efficient and fair procedure to properly admit persons andexpedite the removalof aliens who enter the United States illegally.” The Attorney General is referring here to the “expedited removal” procedures that Congress created in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996. Expedited removal gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to deport, without a hearing, any person who was not admitted to the United States and who cannot prove continuous presence for the prior two years. The Department of Homeland Security currently exercises a narrower expedited removal authority pursuant to the Department's prosecutorial discretion. Only individuals apprehended within two weeks of entry and within 100 miles of a land border are subject to expedited removal, per Department regulations.