Caitlin Dickerson

You have a lot of people for whom English is a second language, or maybe they don't speak English at all who are in immigration court.

And

The Zoom hearings make it that much more difficult because you might have inconsistent video.

The translation might not be as good quality as it could be.

It seemed to me that some people whose cases were being heard didn't even fully understand what the judge had decided.

She would issue a ruling.

These were preliminary hearings.

So for the most part, people were going to be coming back for a subsequent hearing.

But some people after that first hearing stipulate to their removal.

And I was concerned that it seemed some people...

didn't really know what they were agreeing to because the proceedings were moving so fast.

So the Trump administration is also using its diplomatic might to get other countries on board with its mass deportation effort.

I mean, it's sort of amazing.

Anybody from a city mayor to a business owner to a leader of a foreign country, if they come to President Trump right now, the message seems to be, bring me something on immigration if you want to work together.

And so through diplomatic efforts and through pressure campaigns, the Trump administration has convinced people

several dozen countries to accept deportees who are from other parts of the world.

In theory, this is to address the problem that some countries don't accept deportees from the United States.

That's their way of pushing back against the United States and American foreign policy is to say, we're not going to accept people who you want to deport to us.

In reality, that was always a small number of people.

I think this third country removal program is really a scare tactic more than anything else.