Expedited removal, an immigration enforcement strategy originally conceived to operate at the borders and ports of entry, recently has been expanded in certain border regions. Whether the policy should be made mandatory and extended into the interior of the country is emerging as an issue. Expanding expedited removal raises a set of policy, resource, and logistical questions. Expedited removal is a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), under which an alien who lacks proper documentation or has committed fraud or willful misrepresentation of facts to gain admission into the United States is inadmissable and may be removed from the United States without any further hearings or review, unless the alien indicates either an intention to apply for asylum or a fear of persecution. Aliens who receive negative "credible fear" determinations may request that an immigration judge review the case. Under expedited removal, both administrative and judicial review are limited generally to cases in which the alien claims to be a U.S. citizen or to have been previously admitted as a legal permanent resident, a refugee, or an asylee. Aliens subject to expedited removal must be detained until they are removed and may only be released due to medical emergency or if necessary for law enforcement purposes. In addition, aliens who have been expeditiously removed are barred from returning to the United States for five years. Although under law, the Attorney General may apply expedited removal to any alien who has not been admitted or paroled into the United States and cannot show that they have been continuously present for two years, expedited removal has been applied in a more limited manner. Under regulation, expedited removal only applied to arriving aliens at ports of entry from April 1997 to November 2002. In November 2002, the Bush Administration extended expedited removal to aliens arriving by sea who are not admitted or paroled. Subsequently, in August 2004, expedited removal was expanded to aliens who are present without being admitted or paroled, are encountered by an immigration officer within 100 air miles of the U.S. international southwest land border, and have not established to the satisfaction of an immigration officer that they have been physically present in the United States continuously for the 14-day period immediately preceding the date of encounter. Failure to have valid documents has long been a ground for exclusion from the United States. With regard to fraudulent entry in general, the INA provides that "any alien who, by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact, seeks to procure (or has sought to procure or has procured) a visa, other documentation, or admission into the United States or other benefit provided under this Act is inadmissible." The policy option known as expedited removal was proposed in the early 1980s under the name "summary exclusion." The proposal was triggered largely by the mass migration of approximately 125,000 Cubans and 30,000 Haitians to South Florida in 1980. While this dramatic influx of asylum seekers, commonly known as the Mariel boatlift, lasted only a few months, it cast a long shadow over U.S. immigration policy. At that time, aliens arriving at a port of entry to the United States without proper immigration documents were eligible for a hearing before an Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) immigration judge to determine whether the aliens were admissible. If the alien received an unfavorable decision from the immigration judge, he or she also could seek administrative and judicial review of the case. The goal of "summary exclusion" was to stymie unauthorized migration by restricting the hearing, review, and appeal process for aliens arriving without proper documents at ports of entry. It was included and then deleted from legislation that became the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. In 1993, during the 103 rd Congress, the Clinton Administration proposed "summary exclusion" in S. 1333 / H.R. 2836 , the "Expedited Exclusion and Alien Smuggling Enhanced Penalties Act of 1993," to address the problem of aliens arriving at ports of entry without proper documents. The goal of these provisions was to target the perceived abuses of the asylum process by restricting the hearing, review, and appeal process for aliens at the port of entry. The bill would have instituted a "summary exclusion" procedure for such aliens who did not articulate a plausible asylum claim. The House took no action on H.R. 2836 , but approved H.R. 2602 , a similar bill that would have created a summary exclusion process. During the 104 th Congress, the House-passed version of H.R. 2202 "The Immigration in the National Interest Act of 1995" (which subsequently became the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996) had language providing for the "expedited removal of arriving aliens" and deemed aliens who were in the United State without inspection to be arriving. H.R. 2202 also restructured the laws on deportation and exclusion into a single "removal" process. During the debate on its related bill, S. 1664 , however, the Senate eliminated the bill's "expedited removal" provisions, replacing them with a more limited special exclusion process to be used only in "extraordinary migration situations." The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA; P.L. 104 - 208 , Division C) established the expedited removal policy that is in place today. An immigration officer can summarily exclude an alien arriving without proper documentation or an alien present in the United States for less than two years, unless the alien expresses an intent to apply for asylum or has a fear of persecution or torture. According to DHS immigration policy and procedures, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors, as well as other DHS immigration officers, are required to ask each individual who may be subject to expedited removal (i.e., arriving aliens who lack proper immigration documents) a series of "protection questions" to identify anyone who is afraid of return. If the alien expresses a fear of return, the alien is supposed to be detained by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Bureau and interviewed by an asylum officer from DHS' Bureau of Immigration and Citizenship Services (USCIS). The asylum officer then makes the "credible fear" determination of the alien's claim. Those found to have a "credible fear" are referred to an EOIR immigration judge, which places the asylum seeker on the defensive path to asylum. In those cases in which the alien requests it, an immigration judge may review the USCIS asylum officer's determination that the alien does not have a credible fear of persecution. Under IIRIRA, the review must be concluded "as expeditiously as possible, to the maximum extent practicable within 24 hours, but in no case later than 7 days" after the asylum officer's finding of no credible fear. The law states that expedited removals are not subject to administrative appeals; however, those in expedited removal who claim a legal right to reside in the United States based on citizenship, legal permanent residence, asylee or refugee status are to be provided with additional procedural protections, rather than being immediately returned. Aliens whose visas have been revoked by the Department of State are subject to expedited removal. The expedited removal provisions provide very limited circumstances for administrative and judicial review of those aliens who are summarily excluded or removed. Additionally, those in expedited removal are subject to mandatory detention. When expedited removal initially went into effect in April 1997, the INS applied the provisions only to "arriving aliens" as defined in 8 CFR §1.1(q). The discussion accompanying the regulation defining expedited removal procedures and "arriving aliens" clarifies: The [Justice] Department acknowledges that application of the expedited removal provisions to aliens already in the United States will involve more complex determinations of fact and will be more difficult to manage, and therefore wishes to gain insight and experience by initially applying these new provisions on a more limited and controlled basis. The Department does, however, reserve the right to apply the expedited removal procedures to additional classes of aliens within the limits set by the statute, if, in the [INS] Commissioner's discretion, such action is operationally warranted. It is emphasized that a proposed expansion of the expedited removal procedures may occur at any time and may be driven either by specific situations such as a sudden influx of illegal aliens motivated by political or economic unrest or other events or by a general need to increase the effectiveness of enforcement operations at one or more locations. The logistics of expedited removal at ports of entry are fairly straightforward. Aliens placed in expedited removal proceedings are detained pending a determination of their removability. At land ports of entry, the aliens who are issued expedited removal orders are denied entry to the United States. After the expedited removal order is issued at an air or sea port of entry, the airline or sea carrier is required to take the inadmissible alien back on board or have another vessel or aircraft operated by the same company return the alien to the country of departure. On November 13, 2002, INS published a notice clarifying that certain aliens arriving by sea who are not admitted or paroled are to be placed in expedited removal proceedings. This notice concluded that illegal mass migration by sea threatens national security because it diverts the Coast Guard and other resources from their homeland security duties. This expansion of expedited removal was in response to a vessel that sailed into Biscayne Bay, Florida on October 29, 2002, carrying 216 aliens from Haiti and the Dominican Republic who were attempting to enter the United States illegally.