Immigrant rights groups and legal experts say the Trump administration is extending its reach of the U.S. criminal legal system. They argue that the system, a site of systemic racism often targeting Black men, is now being leveraged at ports of entry to arbitrarily harass and detain noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents and green card holders.  

“There’s no way to tell who’s going to be targeted by the government when they’re trying to return,” said Ría Thompson-Washington, the president of the National Lawyers Guild. “We see this as an escalation of attacks on immigrants, on people who have protected status.”

Among the known public cases, most of the immigrants targeted by the Trump administration were returning from overseas trips and nabbed by immigration officials when reentering the U.S. 

“It’s a very scary time for people to make decisions about whether they’re going to be able to get back into the country and under what circumstances,” Thompson-Washington said.

There is no public data on how many lawful permanent residents are stopped by immigration authorities at ports of entry—international airports, land border crossings, and major seaports—or subjected to deportation proceedings. However, an uptick in reports regarding the arbitrary detention of immigrants of color at ports of entry is a serious cause for concern among advocates.

“We’ve got an administration that has established a really vast circle of people they’re subjecting to criminalization, to detention, and deportation, regardless of people’s immigration statuses,” said Shayna Kessler, the director of the universal representation initiative at the Vera Institute for Justice.

Immigration authorities are “weaponizing” law enforcement, Kessler said. “So, whether it’s at ports of entry, schools, houses of worship, on the job, or in courthouses, we’re seeing this extreme weaponization of government authorities to upend the lives of immigrants, whether they’re local permanent residents or people with valid legal claims.”

Take the case of Junior Dioses, a lawful permanent resident who lived in the U.S. for over 20 years and was detained in April at a Texas airport while returning from a trip to his native Peru. Dioses spent two days in custody at the airport, followed by 48 days held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Conover, Texas, according to the NBC-affiliate KSL TV.

Federal immigration authorities pointed to two past convictions—failing to stop for a police officer in 2006 and disorderly conduct in 2019—as reasons for the 39-year-old’s detainment and potential deportation during his time in ICE’s custody. But according to immigration law, these incidents do not justify the removal of a permanent resident.

Drug-related or serious crimes, being absent from the country for 180 consecutive days or more, and fraud or misrepresentation are common reasons for inadmissibility or initiating deportation proceedings against permanent residents. An immigration judge is the only one who can determine whether to revoke the permanent status of a green card holder after government officials present their evidence.

However, the decision to stop a permanent resident relies on Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, who have significant discretion at ports of entry. Any prior contact with the criminal legal system might be enough for a secondary inspection at an airport, during which agents sometimes pressure noncitizens into signing Form I-407 to “voluntarily” give up their resident status.

Federal officials have also targeted noncitizens at ports of entry for their legally protected speech, namely about Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Outside of ports of entry, federal officials unlawfully targeted at least three permanent residents—Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, and Yunseo Chung— for supporting Palestinian rights.

“[CBP agents] can question you and detain you for hours while they investigate whether you should be admitted,” said Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council. “That experience is very frightening.”

Black and brown immigrants are more likely to be stopped and harassed at ports of entry, Winger added. “It’s the way the criminal legal system operates—disproportionately targeting people of color.”

Who gets to be an American

In May, a federal judge said the Trump administration unlawfully ignored court orders when it removed eight immigrants to South Sudan. Two months prior, the administration massively violated due process when, without a court hearing, the Department of Homeland Security  expelled over 200 Venezuelans to a torture prison in El Salvador, where some said they were beaten and sexually assaulted. 

As the Trump administration continues its mass deportation campaign, noncitizens in the U.S.—including those with lawful statuses—say they feel uncertain.

Several community forums now exist on Reddit where green card holders with criminal records share their collective anxiety about returning to the United States after international travel. Most of them report no incidents, but their fears persist.

The Immigration and Nationality Act, the federal law that largely governs immigration in the U.S. (including the requirement that immigrants have a court hearing prior to deportation), has remained unchanged for decades. However, the Trump administration has repeatedly violated the law over the past eight months. 

In other instances, the law is implemented unforgivingly by arresting undocumented immigrants indiscriminately (even those without a criminal record), separating families, revoking Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole programs, and sharply restricting asylum. Grounding these actions is constant rhetoric from the administration that depicts immigrants as “the worst of the worst.”

“They’re kind of instituting a zero-tolerance approach, and that is certainly catching people with green cards in the process,” said Gracie Willis, the raids response coordinator at the National Immigration Project. “They’re overzealous in arresting people and taking people into custody. More zealous than they used to be, and the number of detainees is really high.” As of August 15, almost 60,000 noncitizens were in detention—a record high.

As one example, consider the case of Tae Heung “Will” Kim, detained at San Francisco International Airport in July after returning from his brother’s wedding in Korea. The reason for his detention seemed to be a minor 2011 marijuana possession charge in Texas, even though it was sealed from his public record after he completed community service, The Washington Post reported.

Previously, it was rare for immigration officials to pursue deportation proceedings based on such flimsy grounds, especially against someone like Kim, a Ph.D. student at Texas A&M University working on a vaccine for Lyme disease.

“The administration is putting everybody in apprehension about their risks,” said Ann Garcia, a staff attorney at the National Immigration Project. “I’ve received so many calls from people who wouldn’t have worried a year ago about a trip out of the country. Everybody now feels like they might have a target on their back.”

For people of color disproportionally impacted by the criminal legal system, the stakes are even higher. One in 3 Black boys born today can expect to be sentenced to prison in the U.S., compared with 1 in 6 Latinx boys and 1 in 17 white boys, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. On the streets of U.S. cities, masked, unidentified paramilitary squads have spent the summer kidnapping individuals and disappearing them for days or even months, often based solely on their appearance and location. Previously, the Trump administration was in violation of a court order prohibiting ICE agents from racially profiling Latinx people in Los Angeles during immigration raids. However, on Monday the Supreme Court lifted temporary restrictions on immigration raids, allowing ICE agents to resume stops based on a person’s appearance, language, and location, the Los Angeles Times reported. Some of those detained earlier this summer were American citizens. 

Advocates warn that racial biases in the criminal legal system will only grow in the coming years. The administration admits that it is “unleashing America’s law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect innocent citizens,” according to an executive order issued in April.

At ports of entry, “unleashed” CBP officers have broad discretion to target noncitizens. This can include not only hours of questioning, but also demands to access their electronic devices, and these searches are on the rise. From April to June, CBP officials searched 14,899 devices carried by international travelers, a 16.7% increase from the previous record set in the first quarter of 2022, Wired reported. CBP can even decide to hand over permanent residents to ICE.

That’s what happened to Lewelyn Dixon, a 64-year-old green card holder who was stopped in February at Washington’s Tacoma International Airport after a trip to her native Philippines. CBP transferred her to ICE custody, and she was detained based on a 2001 conviction for embezzlement, for which she served 30 days in a halfway house and paid a $6,400 fine. Her lawyer told Newsweek that in the past, Dixon traveled abroad without any issues. Not anymore.

“The attack on immigrants is about the continuation of racist agendas, white supremacist agendas,” Thompson-Washington said. “It’s about giving the police and federal agencies the license to determine what is illegal and what is illegality and to decide who gets to be an American and who gets to be in this country.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor