De-documentation: Legal immigrants being stripped of status, targeted for deportation

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When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents stopped a van taking men to a painting job in Fairhaven on Sept. 19, most of them got away.

Luís David Ajtzac Osório, though, did not. In fact, the 18-year old said he did not even try to run away. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had already bestowed upon him the status of special immigrant juvenile, and with that came an automatic granting of deferred action. He also had a valid work permit and was waiting for his priority date to apply for legal permanent residency. His clean criminal record only added to his confidence.

“I stepped off the van and they grabbed me, saying I tried to run away,” Osório told The Light in Spanish. “But it wasn’t like that. I already had an immigration process open in the U.S. and I thought it wouldn’t be an issue.”

He said he attempted to show the ICE agents his work permit but they told him it was “trash” and “no good here.” That same day, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court Massachusetts, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services removed his deferred action — a form of prosecutorial discretion given to all special immigrant juveniles since 2022. His lawyer later received a letter — dated the same day he was detained — of CIS’s intention to terminate his work permit.

Osório was eventually released, but he still cannot legally work and still faces the possibility of removal. He had been de-documented. 

The term “de-documented” is a new one,  used by advocates and the press to refer to Trump administration actions that revoke immigrants’ legal status or protection. Advocates and some federal judges are criticizing the administration for the practice.

In an emailed statement to The Light, a CIS spokesman said the changes aimed to cut back on fraud.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is eliminating policies that prioritize foreign nationals ahead of Americans’ safety and security,” CIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser said in a statement to The Light. “This includes Biden-era so-called ‘humanitarian’ policies that invited fraud into the immigration system and allowed criminal aliens to legally live and work in our communities.”

“USCIS will not tolerate the exploitation of programs like the Special Immigrant Juvenile program and Temporary Protected Status, which have been used by criminal aliens, including gang members, to infiltrate our country,” he added. 

Advocates, though, say the actions contradict the administration’s rhetoric about the mass deportation campaign being about issues unrelated to race. 

“That means people working here legally suddenly finding themselves, through no action of their own, without status,” said Laura Rótolo, senior advocacy director for field initiatives at the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. “It’s clear from the actions of this administration that there is an attack on immigrants happening.”

The result is the deportation of people who, often for decades, have been legally in the country. 

“They’re targeting people who’ve gone through the process and gotten to this very baseline protection,” said Heather Arroyo, senior immigration attorney at Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. “By taking those [protections] away, they make people vulnerable to being caged and being deported.”

Group by group

People have lost immigration statuses before, according to Arroyo. But previous administrations followed processes in changing regulations. When the government contemplated a downward adjustment in status, it gave specific reasons, and people had their day in court. 

Not so anymore.

“We didn’t see this sort of umbrella attack on people under previous administrations,” said Sarang Sekhavat, chief of staff at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA). “We have a government right now that just doesn’t care what the law says.”

Many of the changes have made CIS, historically charged with processing applications and creating policy, into an enforcement tool of the administration.

“We’re seeing the weaponization of the system itself,” Rótolo said. 

Advocates who spoke to The Light said they suspect the sweeping moves to eliminate status and halt processes for asylees, humanitarian parolees, students, temporary protected status recipients, and others, lies in making it easier to meet reported daily arrest quotas. 

“This has been frankly low-hanging fruit for them,” Sekhavat said. “They just want to say that people they don’t like are criminal or illegal. They don’t care if they went through the right process.”

The Nov. 26 shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., which resulted in the death of one, became the catalyst for a new wave of such policy changes. Authorities charged Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national granted asylum under the Trump administration, with murder. He pleaded not guilty to the charges on Dec. 2. 

Lakanwal had undergone intense vetting as a member of a Zero Unit in the Afghan National Army, special forces trained by the U.S. military. CIS is framing its crackdown on immigrants in terms of national security and further vetting.

“USCIS has paused all adjudications for aliens from designated high-risk countries while the agency works to ensure that all aliens from these countries are vetted and screened to the maximum degree possible,” Tragesser said. “American safety is non-negotiable. USCIS will continue to move forward with policies to restore integrity and safety to our nation’s immigration system.”

He added that the new vetting measures will include review of social media examination “to detect anti-American and antisemitic sentiments,” the resumption of neighborhood investigations for naturalization applicants, and requiring that applicants “demonstrate good moral character and an attachment to the U.S. Constitution.”

The newly undocumented

Advocates disagreed with the idea that such moves have been in line with the law. They said the changes appear to be systematic and against prescribed processes as outlined in the U.S. Constitution, the Administrative Procedure Act, and other legislation.

“The formula they have been following is to first revoke the legal status or authorization that allows an immigrant to live and work in the United States, and then to deny due process that would allow that person to gain a permanent status,” Arroyo said. “All of these individuals did exactly what the government told them to do in order to have a legal status in the first place and despite having done everything right, their status is taken away.”  

Among the earliest groups subjected to the fate were humanitarian parolees from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security terminated the program in March. About 532,000 parolees instantaneously became eligible for deportation. 

“It is relatively easy for them to say, ‘Yeah, you have parole and now we’re canceling it,’” Sekhavat said. “The other part is they know exactly where these people are. They know where people are living and when they’re going to court dates.”

Though a federal judge issued a stay on the humanitarian parole rescission for Venezuelans, the U.S. Supreme Court in October overturned the stay as the case moves through the courts. On Dec. 12, a U.S. District Court judge reaffirmed his previous decision declaring the program illegal, though he allowed two weeks before the stay went into effect for an appeals court to weigh in. 

That same day, DHS announced the termination of family reunification programs that paroled citizens from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras. Those with active statuses under the program have until Jan. 16 to submit an application for residency or adjustment of status. According to DHS, 36,000 people had been invited to participate in the programs.

Also in administration crosshairs are foreign students, many of whom have advocated publicly for Palestinian independence and called for an end to violence in Gaza. 

In March, masked ICE agents seized Rumeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University Ph.D. student from Turkey, in Somerville’s Powder House Square, in a moment captured on video. The detention came after she co-authored an op-ed in a student newspaper responding to student government resolutions regarding events in Gaza. A federal judge eventually ordered her release and recently ordered ICE to restore her to its Student Exchange Visitor Information System, or SEVIS. The system monitors whether student visa holders are compliant with credit requirements for the visa. Ozturk’s removal from the system meant she could not work.

“All of the sudden they just took [students] off the database and these students were scared and the schools didn’t know what they were supposed to do with it,” Arroyo said. “They don’t have the legal capability to do that.”

By far the largest affected group has been the almost 1.3 million individuals from 17 countries with Temporary Protected Status (TPS) who have lost their status since March. TPS is granted at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security to people from countries facing armed conflict, natural disaster, epidemics, or other crises. It allows people to legally live and work in the country in increments. Those protections disappeared for many when DHS Secretary Kristi Noem removed the status for people from Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. 

“TPS designations are time-limited by law,” Tragesser said, “and were never meant to be a ticket to permanent residency.”

The D.C. shooting seemed to kick the trend into overdrive. On Dec. 12, Noem added Ethiopians to the list of countries with revoked TPS. According to the announcement, they can be deported after Feb. 13.

“[The administration is] taking any opportunity they can to push back against Black and brown people,” Sekhavat said.

Since Nov. 26, the administration decided to halt all asylum processes and suspend residency and citizenship processes for people from 19 nations; it also stopped the issuance of non-immigrant visas to several on that list. It also declared that over 50,000 asylum applications granted under the Biden administration will be reviewed.

On Dec. 16, a new presidential proclamation increased the list of countries facing partial and total visa bans to 39.

Advocates said the policy changes were hypocritical after years when immigration critics called upon immigrants to enter the U.S. “the right way.” Sekhavat cited the administration’s refugee policy as an example. In January, the president issued an executive order ending the refugee resettlement program. However, a group of white Afrikaners from South Africa were allowed to enter the U.S. as refugees in May.  

“The complaint is [refugees] don’t go through enough vetting,” he said, adding that refugees are vetted by 17 federal agencies over the course of two years before being granted the status. “They’re bringing these Afrikaners in with little to no vetting. Apparently Black and brown people need to be vetted, but white people don’t need to be.”

Protected juvenile status challenged

Special immigrant juveniles, like Osório, have also been high-profile targets of the administration.

In 2022, due to a massive backlog of applicants, the Biden administration granted automatic deferred action to all special immigrant juveniles. The status is meant for unaccompanied alien minors who can prove abandonment, neglect, or abuse by parents in their home country. The Trump administration canceled that policy on June 6. The policy change also stated that those already with deferred action would “generally retain” it.

But none of that mattered in Osório’s case. ICE took him to Hanscom Air Force Base to be flown out to Buffalo, New York, where the Buffalo Service Processing Center is located. From there, detainees are often sent to locations farther south, then deported. 

He said he was seated on the plane in chains for about 10 minutes before other immigration agents took him off. A judge at U.S. District Court Massachusetts had just issued a stay of transfer, meaning he could not leave the court’s jurisdiction without 48 hours’ notice. Instead, he was held at the county jail in Plymouth until his release on Oct. 18.

The federal courts may very well be the best tool available to advocates and immigrants, said Arroyo, as administration policy moves to create new undocumented people.

“What we’ve seen over and over is the government taking blatantly unlawful actions,” she said. “It’s on us to hold the government to account through the federal courts. And we’ve seen this again and again that federal courts are recognizing the rights that immigrants do have.”

Uncertain futures

Temperatures in Boston’s City Hall Plaza cut to the bone on Dec. 4 as dozens of advocates, labor unionists, politicians, and citizens gathered in front of the John F. Kennedy Federal Building. The building, which houses the Boston Immigration Court, seemed an ideal location to talk about de-documentation. The rally focused on several car wash workers in Boston’s Allston neighborhood, several of whom had legal status, swept up in an ICE operation on Nov. 4.

“We have a rogue federal government,” said Ruthzee Louijeune, president of the Boston City Council. “I have never seen this level of violation of people’s rights. People with valid work authorizations are being deported.

“The mass termination of legal status has left thousands of formerly legal residents vulnerable,” she continued. “We are not going to live in fear.”

Later that day, recent policy changes manifested themselves in dramatic fashion at Fanueil Hall. Just before a high-profile citizenship ceremony, five people were informed their citizenship application had been canceled. 

Elizabeth Sweet, MIRA’s executive director, said 45 immigrants who’ve applied for citizenship with MIRA’s help now face delays or canceled applications. 

“This decision and the process is as crass as it is cruel and arbitrary,” Sweet said in an emailed statement. “People are disheartened, devastated and rightly outraged.”

In response, Sen. Ed Markey introduced legislation on Dec. 18 that would prohibit last-minute revocation of naturalization after its approval without a specific, individual reason.

“Becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen is not easy and involves an application, background checks, passing English and civics tests, and an interview,” Markey said in a news release. “For those who get over those high hurdles, the naturalization and oath-taking ceremony represents an enormous achievement. … . The Trump administration has no right to deny it to those who have followed the rules, done the work, and been approved for citizenship.” 

The de-documenting campaign appears set to intensify. On Dec. 17, the New York Times reported that guidance issued to CIS field offices asks them to refer 100 to 200 denaturalization cases per month to the Office of Immigration Litigation. Denaturalization is legal only in cases of fraud in the citizenship application and a few other narrow circumstances. Only 120 cases had been filed between 2017 and 2025, according to the paper.

Federal courts are questioning aspects of de-documentation. Last month, a federal judge in New York placed a stay on the cancellation of deferred action, saying the decision violated the Administrative Procedures Act and was “arbitrary and capricious.”

According to the judge’s order, CIS had argued that three plaintiffs with special immigrant juvenile status were already in the country illegally and thus subject to removal, an argument the judge flatly rejected. At one point, the judge called out the government for creating the conditions for their de-documentation.

“In this case, the risk of harm is real,” said U.S. District Court Judge Eric Komitee in the order. “USCIS indicated candidly that it rescinded SIJS-DA in part so that it could remove more SIJS recipients without lawful status.”

The judge cited an internal government memo, currently under seal, that directed CIS to follow an executive order from January to reverse Biden administration actions “that led to the increased or continued presence of illegal aliens in the United States.”

Lawyers and advocates say immigrants must continue to insist on their civil rights.

“The most effective thing we’ve been seeing so far is really the ‘know your rights’ trainings,” Sekhavat said. “It’s the only thing we can do.”

He said people have the right to film ICE agents performing enforcement actions and that it’s important to do so.

“Having evidence of what they’re doing has been really impactful on making people see what’s really going on,” he said.

Advocates say the government’s moves are laying bare some national myths about immigration.

“There’s always been this myth that as long as you wait in line and fill out the right papers, you can get in,” said Rótolo of the Massachusetts ACLU. “What’s happening under the Trump administration is, they’re taking away more and more of their legal pathways.”

Osório spent one month and 14 days in detention at the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, where, he told The Light, he was the youngest among the immigrant detainees. The Chelmsford Immigration Court terminated his case and ordered his release on bond. 

He now has to wait for his next date in immigration court in April 2026 to potentially renew his work permit. 

“This is how they treat us now just because we’re from a different country,” he said.

Contact Kevin G. Andrade at kandrade@newbedfordlight.org.