WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a policy update officials described as “streamlined” and immigration attorneys described as “a felony if a private citizen did it,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Sunday that migrants may now be deported to third countries with as little as six hours of notice, a window roughly equivalent to the time it takes the same agency to reset a password.
The new directive permits ICE to remove individuals not just to their country of origin but to any third country willing to accept them, with the receiving nation selected through a process the agency has so far declined to describe in writing, in court, or to its own attorneys.
“Six hours is more than enough time to gather your belongings, contact your family, and accept Christ,” said acting field operations director Bram Halloran, reading from a binder labeled HUMANITARIAN TALKING POINTS in marker. “We’ve also added a QR code to the removal notice that links to a list of approximate continents.”
Internal guidance reviewed by attorneys at the Cardozo Immigration Justice Clinic indicates the third country need not have any prior connection to the deportee, share a common language, or, in at least one drafted scenario, currently exist as a stable nation-state. The document reportedly includes a footnote reading “see attached map,” though no map was attached.
The administration framed the policy as a long-overdue correction to a system that had been giving migrants the procedurally indulgent timeline of, in some cases, an entire weekend. Officials noted that six hours is, by their own internal benchmarking, “plenty.” Pressed on the benchmark, the agency clarified that the figure was arrived at by asking three people in an elevator.
Receiving countries reached for comment expressed varying degrees of surprise to learn they were receiving countries. A spokesperson for one Central African nation said his government had been informed of an incoming flight via a State Department email that began “Hi!” and ended with a calendar invite. Another country said it had not been contacted at all and would prefer to keep it that way.
Civil rights attorneys pointed out that six hours is shorter than the federal government’s own posted wait time for a passport renewal, the length of a single shift at the very TSA checkpoints the deportees will be moved through, and the standard cancellation window for a haircut in most American cities. ICE responded that those comparisons were “not apples to apples” without specifying what they were apples to.
“The beauty of the six-hour rule is its flexibility,” said Halloran, who at this point had stopped reading from the binder. “If we determine that six hours is operationally inconvenient, we retain the discretion to make it four. Or two. Or to skip notice entirely and surprise everyone, including ourselves.”
At press time, the agency was reportedly drafting a follow-up rule clarifying that the six-hour clock begins not when the migrant is informed of their deportation but when ICE first considered informing them, a change officials described as a clerical update and attorneys described as the entire point.