Washington – The National Security Department has returned what the lawyers called an illegal attempt to accelerate the deportation of a woman who has lived in the United States for almost 30 years and expel her without a hearing in the immigration court, said her lawyers.
The lawyers of Mirta Amarilis Co Tupul, 38, filed a lawsuit earlier this month to stop their imminent deportation to Guatemala. A judge of the United States District Court in Arizona dismissed the case on Wednesday after the Federal Government transferred the woman to regular deportation procedures and agreed in writing not to attempt accelerated elimination again, their lawyers said.
The judge had granted an emergency application to temporarily stop the deportation while the case was developed in the Court.
The case highlighted the broadest concerns that the Trump administration is stretching the immigration law to accelerate deportations in its effort to eliminate as many immigrants as possible.
Federal Law since 1996 maintains that immigrants who have lived in the US. For less than two years can be placed in accelerated elimination procedures that avoid the immigration court process. However, immigrants for a long time cannot be withdrawn until they had the opportunity to declare their case before a judge.
In an affidavit, one of the CO Tupul lawyers wrote that a deportation officer told him that the agency had a “new policy” of placing immigrants in removal procedures issued after his first contact with the immigration authorities.
“This seems to have been a case of evidence in which the Administration tried to enforce a 'new policy' against Mrs. Co Tupul,” said Eric Lee on Thursday, one of CO Tupul's lawyers. “The District Court quickly closed this effort in unequivocal terms. Perhaps this has slowed the government's efforts to expand the elimination issued, or perhaps the government is waiting for another case of evidence in which the non -citizen lacks legal representation.”
The emails reviewed by The Times showed that CO Tupul's lawyer provided extensive evidence of his residence for a long time. Immigration officials told the lawyer that his client would remain in accelerated removal procedures anyway.
The National Security Assistant Secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, said that after CO Tupul lawyers provided documentation that verified that he had lived in the United States for more than two years, “ICE followed the law and placed it in normal elimination procedures.”
“Any accusation that the DHS is 'testing' a new policy with respect to illegal foreigners who have been in the country for more than two years in the accelerated elimination is false,” McLaughlin added.
Co Tupul, a Phoenix resident, was arrested while leading a laundry on July 22. It remains detained at the Eloy detention Center, about 65 miles southeast of Phoenix.
