"Permanent-residency applications from more than seventy countries have been frozen, naturalization ceremonies cancelled. When spouses of U.S. citizens have shown up for routine green-card interviews, they've been arrested; others in the middle of applying for their legal status are getting detained and, in some cases, deported outright. The agency is beginning a sweeping campaign to denaturalize large numbers of citizens, aiming to strip them of their legal status; officials have monthly quotas for how many cases they must flag for review."
"As one former senior official told me, "turning U.S.C.I.S. into an enforcement arm is making it seem like the reason we have an immigration system is to keep people out.""
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the country's legal-immigration system, processing citizenship, green cards, visas, and work permits. The agency historically functioned as a benefits-focused bureaucracy rather than an enforcement body. In the past year the agency's mission shifted toward enforcement, with permanent-residency applications from over seventy countries frozen and naturalization ceremonies canceled. Routine green-card interviews have led to arrests, applicants have been detained and deported, and officials are pursuing a broad denaturalization campaign with monthly quotas for cases flagged for review. These changes reorient the immigration system toward exclusion through paperwork and enforcement.
Read at The New Yorker
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