When Shadow Removals Collide: Searching for Solutions to the Legal Black Holes Created by Expedited Removal and Reinstatement

59 Pages Posted: 28 Apr 2018 Last revised: 6 Sep 2019

See all articles by Jennifer Lee Koh

Jennifer Lee Koh

Pepperdine University - Rick J. Caruso School of Law

Date Written: April 10, 2018

Abstract

Immigration scholarship has begun to explore the prominence of shadow removals–deportations that are executed by front-line agency officials acting outside the presence of an immigration judge—which now constitute the majority of all reported removals. This Article explores two of the most common forms of shadow removals, expedited removal and reinstatement of removal, and the collision of the two. Expedited removal has typically been perceived as a border enforcement tool, used against persons with limited ties to the U.S. Reinstatement of removal exists for persons who enter the US following a prior removal. The rising use of each streamlined procedure is, on its own, troubling from a fairness, accuracy and rule of law perspective. But like chemical compounds mixing and creating new substances, expedited removal and reinstatement interact to produce unique sites in which the law renders people forever subject to immediate deportation based primarily on the existence of a brief encounter at some point in the past with a border official. These sites are akin to legal black holes in immigration law, and have not been examined in any of the scholarly literature to date.

This Article is the first to consider the interplay of expedited removal and reinstatement. It traces the operation of the two removal processes, both independently and in combination with each other. It emphasizes the harsh statutory bars on judicial and habeas review, and the resulting inability of the federal judiciary to ameliorate the harshness of removal in this context. The Article then suggests that the use of reinstatement based on prior expedited removal orders fails the basic administrative law requirement that federal agencies demonstrate reasoned decisionmaking and avoid arbitrary or capricious action. Relying on the Supreme Court’s decision in Judulang v. Holder, which applied arbitrary & capricious review in the deportation context, the Article encourages courts to more closely scrutinize the use of reinstatement based on expedited removal.

Keywords: Immigration, removal, deportation, summary removal, expedited removal, reinstatement of removal, due process, statutory interpretation, judicial review, habeas, suspension clause, arbitrary and capricious, plenary power, entry fiction, constitutional avoidance

Suggested Citation

Koh, Jennifer Lee, When Shadow Removals Collide: Searching for Solutions to the Legal Black Holes Created by Expedited Removal and Reinstatement (April 10, 2018). 96 Washington University Law Review 337 (2018), UC Irvine School of Law Research Paper No. 2019-44, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3160259

Jennifer Lee Koh (Contact Author)

Pepperdine University - Rick J. Caruso School of Law ( email )

24255 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90263
United States

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