5 things to know about ICE's plan to deport some families

Thomas Homan, President Donald Trump's top immigration enforcer, told Congress last week that Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon increase deportations of families issued orders of removal.

"They've had their due process. They've been ordered removed by an immigration judge," Homan said.

Here's what that means.

Which families is Homan referring to?

Since 2014, a steady wave of undocumented parents traveling with children have been arriving at the southern border. They either turn themselves over to U.S. Border Patrol agents after crossing the border illegally, or present themselves to U.S. border officers at official ports of entry and ask to apply for asylum.

The majority of the families are women and children from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, where gang violence is a huge problem, driving up murder rates to some of the highest in the world. Political turmoil and poverty exacerbates the situation.

In fiscal year 2017 alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection processed 98,108 undocumented family members, including 75,622who entered illegally, and 22,486 who presented themselves to CBP officers at official border crossings.

And the numbers are rising. From October through April of this fiscal year, CBP has processed 79,548 undocumented family members, including 49,622 who entered the U.S. illegally, and 29,926 who presented themselves to CBP officers at official border crossings. That is on pace to exceed the number of undocumented family members who arrived last year.

MORE: U.S. to begin deporting families with deportation orders, ICE warns

What are removal orders?

After arriving in the U.S., some undocumented family members are quickly deported to their home countries without appearing before an immigration judge through a process called expedited removal, said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute.

But those who express a fear of returning to their home countries are given a chance to apply for asylum if they pass an interview to determine whether their fear is credible, Capps said.

After being held in detention centers, most undocumented families are eventually released while they await the outcome of their asylum cases.

Because of a growing backlog of asylum cases, it can take two years or longer for undocumented immigrants to receive an asylum hearing in front of an immigration judge.

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Immigration officials told Congress that only about 20 percent of asylum cases are approved by immigration judges.

Immigration judges generally issue orders of removal for two reasons, Capps said. In absentia, when undocumented family members fail to show up for their immigration hearings, or after undocumented immigrants lose their asylum cases.

It's not clear how many undocumented families are still living in the U.S. after being ordered removed by an immigration judge, either in absentia or because they lost their asylum case. But Capps estimated the number is likely in the "tens of thousands."

Why are there so many families with removal orders still in the U.S.?

Undocumented families fail to show up for immigration hearings for many reasons.

Some never received notices about their court dates, either because they moved, or because notices were sent to the wrong address or never sent, said Ben Johnson, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

Others don't show up on purpose because they know they don't have a strong asylum case or they are scared, he said.

As a result, some undocumented families may not be aware that they have been issued an order of removal by an immigration judge because the order was issued in absentia after they failed to show up for a hearing.

In fiscal year 2017, immigration judges issued a total of 40,579 removal orders in absentia, including 4,599 to people who had applied for asylum, according to the Department of Justice's Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees immigration judges.

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In addition, there are several reasons why undocumented families issued orders of removal after losing their asylum claims may also not have left.

Some are appealing their asylum cases, Johnson said. He noted that some immigration judges are "notorious" for denying asylum cases based on gang violence or domestic abuse as a matter of course.

"Removal of people who have had their day in court, as Homan says, is not an offensive concept," Johnson said. "What is offensive is when they use those words to describe cases where they never really had a day in court, and where the system took no account of how long they have been here or what kind of life they have to deconstruct as part of the removal process."

How will ICE start deporting families with removal orders?

Under President Barack Obama's administration, immigration authorities generally did not target undocumented families with orders of removal.

They even allowed some to remain in the U.S. under orders of supervision that required them to check in periodically with ICE, Capps said.

That policy has generally continued under the Trump administration, but now appears about to change, Capps said.

Since ICE already has home addresses and other information about undocumented families who were processed after arriving in the U.S., it may not be difficult to find many of them at their homes, Capps said.

"They would show up and arrest parent and child, who ever the family unit was, and they might arrest other members of the family because they've been arresting collaterals, so it's possible they could be arresting entire families," Capps said. "It's also possible they will do some of those arrests while people are driving around, or places of employment or generally out in public."

MORE: More National Guard members deployed to the Arizona border

What are the dangers of deporting families back to Central America?

Undocumented families from Central America who come to the U.S. are often fleeing gang and cartel violence, political upheaval, poverty, and drought.

The conditions are pretty dire, Capps said.

"Honduras and El Salvador have some of the highest murder rates in the world, and Guatemala is one of the poorest countries in the western Hemisphere," Capps said.

Deported families would be returning to those same conditions, Capps said.

"Some people are at risk," he said. "Some people have been directly victimized by violence and might experience violence if they return. Others are subject to the same insecurity and poverty that faces almost everybody in those countries."

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