Deportation, Explained

From courtrooms to consulates, shackles to self-deportation, here’s what the removal process actually looks like in America—and why the system’s flaws matter more than ever.

⚠️ A Note Before We Begin

With deportations becoming such a mainstay of news media reporting these days, I’ve been wanting to publish this post for a while. I finally had the time to finalize it earlier this week and scheduled it for today.

Then Wednesday happened.

What began as a 9AM heads-up from a colleague quickly became an all-day flood of messages, emails, and reports: ICE agents showing up in immigration courts across the country.

They questioned children. Pressured judges. Arrested people who were following the law and showing up for their hearings. People who had entered the country under the very rules the Biden administration put in place - only to have the Trump administration treat those rules as if they never existed.

Some were applying for asylum.

Some brought their kids.

Some had lawyers. Many didn’t.

This wasn’t about public safety. It was a coordinated effort to use a January rule change expanding expedited removal to fast-track deportations without a hearing before a judge.

So while the post below still describes how deportation usually works, it’s now also a snapshot of a system being dismantled in real time.

And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming - though it’s hard to call any of this “routine.”

Last week, a flight quietly left Houston carrying 65 people and $65,000 in government-issued incentives. Billed as a new, “humane” self-deportation program, it was the Trump administration’s latest move to reframe removal as voluntary.

But what does deportation really look like, who decides how it happens, and who actually foots the bill?