The Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (the 1996 Act), which amended the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA),as amended, was enacted September 30, 1996 (P.L. 104-208). Among other things, the 1996 Act included a new provision, which is called expedited removal, for dealing with aliens who attempt to enter the United States by engaging in fraud or misrepresentation (e.g., falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen or misrepresenting a material fact) or who arrive with fraudulent, improper, or no documents (e.g., visa or passport). The expedited removal provision, which went into effect on April 1, 1997, reduces an alien’s right to seek review of a determination of inadmissibility decision. In the years preceding the passage of the 1996 Act, concerns were raised about the difficulty of preventing illegal aliens from entering the United States and the difficulty of identifying and removing the illegal aliens once they entered this country. The expedited removal process was designed to prevent aliens who attempt to enter the United States by engaging in fraud or misrepresentation or who arrive without proper documents from entering this country at our ports of entry. Several legal services organizations and individual aliens have challenged the constitutionality of the expedited removal process established by the 1996 Act (see app. I for a discussion of these court cases). These suits claim, among other things, that the expedited removal process denies substantive and procedural rights to asylum seekers; creates an unreasonably high risk of erroneous removals of citizens, lawful permanent residents, and other holders of valid visas; denies the organizations’ First Amendment right of access to aliens applying for entry into the United States; and may not be correctly applied to unaccompanied minors. As of March 15, 1998, these cases were pending in federal court. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and immigration judges have roles in implementing the provisions of the 1996 Act relating to the expedited removal of aliens. INS’ responsibilities include (1) inspecting aliens to determine their admissibility and (2) reviewing the basis and credibility of aliens who are subject to expedited removal but who claim a fear of persecution if returned to their home country or country of last residence. Aliens can request that immigration judges review INS’ negative credible fear determinations. Immigration judges, who report to the Chief Immigration Judge, are in the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), within the Department of Justice. The immigration judges are located in immigration courts throughout the country. Before the 1996 Act, aliens who wanted to be admitted to the United States at a port of entry were required to establish admissibility to an inspector. This requirement remains applicable under the 1996 Act. INS has about 4,500 inspectors and about 260 staffed ports of entry. Generally, aliens provide inspectors with documents that show they are authorized to enter this country. At this primary inspection, the INS inspector either permits the aliens to enter or sends the aliens for a more detailed review of their documents or further questioning by another INS inspector. The more detailed review is called secondary inspection. In deciding whether to admit the alien, the INS inspector is to review the alien’s documents for accuracy and validity and check INS’ and other agencies’ databases for any information that could affect the alien’s admissibility. After reviewing the alien’s documents and interviewing the alien at the secondary inspection, the inspector may either admit or deny admission to the alien or take other discretionary action. INS can prohibit aliens from entering the United States for a number of reasons (e.g., criminal activity or failing to have a valid visa, passport, or other required documents). Inspectors have discretion to permit aliens to (1) enter the United States under limited circumstances even though they do not meet the requirements for entry or (2) withdraw their applications for admission and depart. Before the April 1, 1997, enactment of the expedited removal process, the INA authorized the Attorney General to exclude certain aliens from admission into the United States. Aliens whom inspectors determined to be excludable from this country generally were allowed either to (1) return voluntarily to the country from which they came or (2) appear for an exclusion hearing before an immigration judge. During this hearing, aliens who said they had a fear of persecution if they were returned to their home country could file an application for asylum. The immigration judges’ decisions could be appealed to EOIR’s Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), which is a quasi-judicial body that hears appeals of INS’ and immigration judges’ decisions. Furthermore, the alien could appeal BIA’s decision through the federal court system. The scope of the federal court’s review was limited to whether the government followed established procedures. Aliens who were excluded from entering the United States under this process generally were barred from reentering this country for 1 year. The exclusion process is discussed in more detail in chapter 2. From April 1, 1996, to October 31, 1996, the monthly average number of aliens who INS (1) inspected at U.S. ports of entry was about 27.1 million; (2) referred to secondary inspection was about 780,000; and (3) did not admit into this country was about 63,250. Under the 1996 Act, an INS inspector, instead of an immigration judge, can issue an expedited removal order to aliens who (1) are denied admission to the United States because they engage in fraud or misrepresentation or arrive without proper documents when attempting to enter this country and (2) do not express a fear of returning to their home country. INS is to remove the alien from this country. Aliens who are issued an expedited removal order generally are barred from reentering this country for 5 years. The expedited removal provision also established a new process for aliens who express a fear of being returned to their home country and who are subject to expedited removal. Inspectors are to refer such aliens to INS asylum officers for an interview to determine whether the aliens have a credible fear of persecution or harm if returned to their home country. This is called a credible fear interview. The term “credible fear of persecution” is defined by statute as “a significant possibility, taking into account the credibility of the statements made by the alien in support of the alien’s claim and such other facts as are known to the officer, that the alien could establish eligibility for asylum under Section 208” of the INA. INS has a cadre of about 400 asylum officers who are involved with the asylum process. About 300 of these officers have been trained to conduct credible fear interviews. INS has eight asylum offices nationwide. The expedited removal process is discussed in more detail in chapter 2, and the credible fear process is discussed further in chapter 3. From April 1, 1997, to October 31, 1997, the monthly average number of aliens who INS (1) inspected at ports of entry was about 28.9 million;(2) referred to secondary inspection was about 608,000; and (3) did not admit was about 56,500. The 1996 Act requires us to study the implementation of the expedited removal process, including credible fear determinations, and report to the Senate and House Committees on the Judiciary. We address the following aspects of the exclusion and expedited removal processes in this report: how the expedited removal process and INS procedures to implement it are different from the process and procedures used to exclude aliens before the 1996 Act; the implementation and results of the process for making credible fear determinations during the 7 months following April 1, 1997; and the mechanisms that INS established to monitor expedited removals and credible fear determinations and to further improve these processes. We also provide information on INS’ and EOIR’s estimates of costs to implement the expedited removal process and the time required to adjudicate expedited removal cases and credible fear determinations. We did our work at INS and EOIR headquarters offices and INS field locations at five U.S. ports of entry—two land ports and three airports. These five locations had about 50 percent of the expedited removal cases during the first 7 months after the 1996 Act was implemented. We judgmentally selected these 5 of the about 260 staffed ports to include a large number of entries by aliens, geographically diverse areas, and the 2 major types of ports of entry (land ports and airports). We selected San Ysidro (CA), as a southern land port; Niagara Falls (NY), as a northern land port; and Miami International, Los Angeles International, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy International (JFK) Airports. According to INS, these ports were expected to have large volumes of expedited removal orders, and the airports were anticipated to have a large number of credible fear referrals. We discussed these selections with INS officials who said that the ports should provide us with a reasonable representation of its implementation of the new law. Although we visited the Niagara Falls land port, we included in some of our analyses, data for the entire Buffalo district, which includes the Niagara Falls land port. We selected the three asylum offices at which we did our field work—New York, Miami, and Los Angeles—because they conducted credible fear interviews for four (Los Angeles, JFK, Miami, and San Ysidro) of the five ports we visited. The Newark (NJ) asylum office conducted credible fear interviews for the Buffalo District Office. Because Newark was not one of the five ports we included in our review, we decided not to increase our audit costs by adding another location. We did our fieldwork related to EOIR at four of the immigration courts—Wackenhut (New York City), Krome (Miami), San Pedro (Los Angeles), and El Centro (El Centro, CA)—which held reviews of negative credible fear determinations for aliens who attempted entry at the ports we visited. We selected these four courts because they were near the ports of entry included in our review.