DHS awards deportation amnesty for Ethiopians
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has awarded a controversial deportation amnesty to thousands of Ethiopians illegally living in the U.S., despite the agency’s decision to prosecute a number of individuals for crimes committed in the country.
The Trump administration has previously approved the deportation of thousands of illegal immigrants who had lived in the U.S. for decades but were convicted of only minor crimes. Now the administration is giving them a second chance at life — one that could lead to indefinite detention and deportation.
Ethiopian authorities have already initiated deportation proceedings against 10,000 immigrants who had a green card and had lived in the U.S. for decades without being convicted of a crime, which is a serious crime in the country. The government is now offering them amnesty for their crimes.
“It is outrageous that the Trump administration has awarded citizenship to thousands of people who were convicted of crimes punishable by deportation in the United States and are now free to walk out of the U.S. when it might choose to prosecute them for their crimes,” the Center for Immigration Studies president and immigration policy expert Jessica M. Vaughan said in a prepared statement.
“It is a cruel and dangerous political decision that ignores the country’s immigration laws and flies in the face of our nation’s commitment to family unity and mutual respect,” she added.
Honduras to deport thousands of Salvadoran migrants
The government of Honduras has announced it will deport hundreds of Salvadorans who arrived in the country without documentation. The Salvadoran Migration Institute (IME) said the repatriation was a response to threats of mass deportations that the country’s president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, received in the past several months.
The IME said Honduras’s President Hernandez had written President Donald Trump asking the United States to deport more asylum-seeking Salvadorans because the country has not received more immigrants from El Salvador in several months.
