“Deportation is the most commonly understood term, but it refers to a codified judicial process for expelling an alien back to their home country for violating immigration law—a process that the Trump administration’s program barely resembled. In the multiple cases of foreign students who were snatched off the street and had their visas revoked, they were given no due process and provided no evidence of what, if any, laws they had violated.
The Trump administration also summarily expelled several hundred alleged Venezuelan gang members and sent them not to their home country but to a nightmarish Salvadoran megaprison. The only word we have that comes close to describing that, courtesy of the war on terror, is to rendition someone.
At the same time, the administration terminated temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of refugees from countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua. There were also reports that the White House was considering revoking legal status for Ukrainians who had fled their war-torn country.
There is a term for that last one: refoulement—the act of returning a refugee or asylum seeker back to the country from which they fled, and where they face serious risk of harm. The principle of non-refoulement is a cornerstone of international refugee law.”