President Donald Trump said yesterday that U.S. authorities would begin next week removing millions of immigrants who are in the United States illegally, according to a Reuters report.
“Next week ICE will begin the process of removing the millions of illegal aliens who have illicitly found their way into the United States,” Trump tweeted, referring to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
“They will be removed as fast as they come in,” he said. He did not offer specifics, Reuters reported.
According to Reuters, there are an estimated 12 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally, mainly from Mexico and Central America.
Under a deal reached earlier this month, Mexico has agreed to take Central American immigrants seeking asylum in the United States until their cases are heard in U.S. courts.
The agreement, which included Mexico pledging to deploy National Guard troops to stop Central American immigrants from reaching the U.S. border, averted a Trump threat to hit Mexican imports with tariffs.
Meanwhile, it is also believed that there are thousands of Guyanese and other Caribbean nationals living illegally in the United States. Among the illegals are persons who would have overstayed their non-immigrant visas.
In fact only a few weeks ago, Guyana was red-flagged by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which revealed in its 2018 Entry/Exit Overstay Report that some 3,220 Guyanese overstayed in the US on non-immigrant visas, after arriving for business or on vacation.
This, according to the report, occurred over the period of October 2017 to September 2018, during which time 66,416 Guyanese were supposed to depart from the US. These figures represent a 4.85 per cent overstay rate and are an increase from the previous year, when 2,262 Guyanese also overstayed their time.
Of the latest numbers, the report states that 3,065 of these Guyanese are suspected to have been hiding in the US during this period. It also states that 155 are out of country overstays, or persons who eventually left the country having already overstayed their time.
In addition, the US has found that 45 of this amount were Guyanese students studying in the US and exchange visitors who overstayed the time they were given. There were 339 persons in this category who were supposed to depart the country during the one-year period, an overstay rate of 13.27 per cent.
The report noted that “identifying the offending aliens who overstay their time is important for national security, public safety, immigration enforcement and immigration benefits” purposes.
