On Friday, April 4, some Ukrainians in the United States who arrived under the U4U asylum program after 2022 received an email from the US Border Patrol demanding that they leave the United States immediately.
Ukrainian journalist Ostap Yarysh wrote about this on Facebook.
" It is time for you to leave the United States. … Your authorization to stay in the country will expire in seven days. If you do not leave the United States IMMEDIATELY, you may be subject to law enforcement action, which may result in removal from the country. You will be subject to criminal prosecution, fines, and other legal measures. … Do not attempt to remain in the United States. The federal government will find you ," the letter said.
The letter came from an official government post office. This seriously alarmed immigration lawyers, as there had been no other official announcement of the immediate cancellation of the program.
The Ministry of Homeland Security later confirmed to reporters that they had indeed sent out such a letter - but said it was done in error. Ukrainians who received the mailing received an update: "The conditions of your stay in the country remain unchanged at this time."
The ministry did not provide additional comments about what this error means, how it happened, who wrote this text and why.
" By the way, this is not the first such miscalculation. After coming to power, the Trump administration began to implement an aggressive migration policy, fulfilling the president's campaign promises on which he was elected. For the most part, the authorities' actions were aimed at lawbreakers or undocumented migrants in the United States. But some people who were in the country legally fell under the "cleansing".
One case involved a Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen. The couple and their children lived in Maryland, but on March 15, the man was deported from the country, accused of being part of a gang, and imprisoned in El Salvador.
The US Justice Department later admitted that this was due to an “administrative error.” But they added that they could not return the man because he was now under the jurisdiction of El Salvador. Officials also said that doing so would hinder US foreign policy and crime-fighting efforts.
On Friday, a district court in Maryland ordered the US government to return the man home no later than Monday. We will see how this decision will be implemented in the coming days ," the journalist wrote.
Yarysh noted that even foreigners with green cards who have lived and worked in the country for years have begun to treat travel outside the United States with serious caution.
" There have been several cases in the media where permanent residence permit holders were intensively questioned at airports, and some were detained, accused of violating laws.
In the past few weeks, posts with clear messages from the new government have appeared on the pages of many foreign US missions (including the embassy in Kyiv). “Foreign citizens who violate US law may be deported.” “We do not want individuals in our country who threaten national and public security.”
In a comment to reporters, the US immigration service said: "The Trump administration is enforcing immigration laws - something the previous administration was unable to do ," the journalist said.
As Apostrophe reported, in January the United States staged a large-scale deportation of hundreds of "illegal immigrants."