Trump Administration Doubles Deportation Output Per Migrant
Officials achieved a landmark gain in government efficiency Friday when a federal judge held the Department of Homeland Security in contempt for deporting the same 19-year-old asylum seeker twice despite three court orders protecting him. Previous administrations routinely exhausted an entire migrant after one removal, forcing agents to locate additional people whenever they wanted to increase deportation totals. The Trump administration instead discovered that the same person can be counted repeatedly if employees ignore enough emails.
U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a Trump appointee, ordered the government to return the young man from El Salvador, restore his documents and refrain from deporting him again until his asylum claim is resolved. The ruling threatens DHS’s “deport first, deport again, check the docket eventually” model, under which judicial orders are treated as optional reading for staff members who have already clicked “mark as read.” Administration attorneys acknowledged that the second removal was improper, but Gallagher maintained the antiquated position that a court order remains binding even after the executive branch becomes bored with it.
President Donald Trump praised the department’s output while rejecting what he described as a court-imposed quota of one deportation per person. “Nobody has ever deported the same person twice like us, nobody,” Trump said. “The judges want one deportation and then you stop, which is weak, wasteful and frankly a terrible deal for the American taxpayer.” DHS attributed the second removal to a communication error, demonstrating that the department can now convert an unread Outlook notification into international travel faster than most Americans can redeem airline miles.
The contempt order was Gallagher’s second against the administration in the same litigation, giving officials another measurable policy result without requiring Congress, legal authority or successful interoffice communication. The parties must report on efforts to return the asylum seeker, after which DHS can restore his documents, detain him, misplace the documents and prepare a third removal to ensure procedural consistency. Deporting one person twice is now officially twice as efficient as obeying the law once.
* None of the quotes in this article were spoken by an actual person. More info.