UPDATE: On April 3, 2025, US Citizenship and Immigration Services announced Employment Authorization Document application procedures for Hong Kongers covered by Deferred Enforced Departure. After a period of confusion and delay lasting more than two months since DED was extended on January 15, this essentially brings EAD into alignment with DED. It is a relief for those Hong Kongers covered by DED who have been in limbo over whether or not they would continue to be authorized to work in the US as they had been previously. In my own view, this should not in itself be taken as a sign that the Trump administration intends to preserve DED for Hong Kongers; rather, this appears largely to be a correction of a bureaucratic snafu which can typically occur in the transition from one administration to another and after some time was sorted out by conscientious bureaucrats who were repeatedly alerted to the problem by Hong Kong advocacy groups.

Because this matter is very sensitive for those concerned, I should state at the start that, up to now, no Trump administration official has said anything about eliminating Deferred Enforced Departure in general or about DED for Hong Kongers specifically. (Besides Hong Kongers, there are also DED orders for Lebanese, Liberians and Palestinians.) Nor has anyone in the Trump administration expressed antipathy toward Hong Kongers in the US as they have toward other groups such as Venezuelans. The Trump administration has targeted Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which is adjacent to DED in that is also a temporary status created by executive order, but not DED. Yet.

Last week, news came in that a Hong Konger on DED had been detained by Customs and Border Protection in a US territory.

DED stands for Deferred Enforced Departure and refers to an executive order issued by President Joe Biden initially in 2021 and since renewed twice. It essentially means that any Hong Konger in the United States at the time of the order will not be deported, regardless of their legal status in the US, as long as the order is in effect. It was most recently extended on January 15, 2025, just before Trump assumed office, for 24 months.

Because of Trump’s generally aggressive stance on immigration, and the antipathy expressed by Trump advisers toward Temporary Protected Status, another form of immigration status similar to DED in that it allows those protected by it to remain in the country only while the order is in effect, there has been a lot of sweating over whether Trump would revoke DED for Hong Kongers.

On the one hand, no one in the Trump circle has spoken out against DED for Hong Kongers specifically, and support for Hong Kongers has up to now generally been bipartisan in DC; on the other, the administration’s approach to immigration (as with much else: the federal government, relations with allies, the economy, etc) can often resemble taking a wrecking ball to as wide a swath of the immigration infrastructure as possible now and asking questions later. On top of that, Trump’s shown hostility to just about any measures taken by Biden and reveled in revoking them.

DED was originally intended as no more than a stopgap measure, to remain in place only until a more durable way (ie, legislation passed in Congress) could be found to protect Hong Kongers, but because of Republican allergies to anything to do with immigration, enacting legislation has proven impossible. One of the criticisms expressed about TPS and DED is that these are temporary measures that in some cases have ended up lasting years because no other more durable solution is found so everyone is content to let them drone on. The limbo isn’t good for beneficiaries either. Still, the best result would be for Congress and the White House to work together to find the best solution, whether passing legislation to allow those under TPS and DED to stay in the country under a more durable status, or determining simply that TPS and DED are no longer needed for the people concerned. That kind of rational decision-making is not what’s happening at present.

All the uncertainty due to Trump’s return to the White House has been compounded by the sheer chaos of his administration. Often the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing, and so the default becomes, Do nothing that might offend the boss.

In the case of DED for Hong Kongers, while the DED page of US Citizenship and Immigration Services website clearly shows the 24-month extension from January 15, 2025, the E-Verify page says, “At this time, DED-related Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) provided to certain Hong Kong residents have not been extended.” This seems to indicate that Hong Kongers on DED don’t have the authorization to work. Inquiries to the administration have not yet resolved the issue, leaving the affected Hong Kongers in an even more acute state of uncertainty. (As far as the number of Hong Kongers affected goes, probably the most accurate published estimate is 3,680 from the Congressional Research Service, but it could be more or fewer—there’s no registry.)

So this was the complicated, messy and unclear background to the Hong Konger being detained in the US territory. It was said that CBP wasn’t quite sure of the Hong Konger’s DED status or what that meant, so until the matter was cleared up, the individual was being detained. The funny thing was, one doesn’t even have to pass through immigration to go to and from a US territory to the continental US, only customs.

One could easily understand the confusion of a CBP officer in some far-flung outpost given the confusion in DC. But this occurred against the backdrop of extraordinarily aggressive policing of foreigners in the US, even those who indisputably have legal status to remain and have not been previously arrested or committed any crimes, as well as foreigners who should, under normal circumstances, legally be allowed to enter the US being turned away.

Especially alarming are the arrests of students who have expressed solidarity with Palestinians. Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University had a green card and is married to a US citizen about to give birth to their first child. His “crime” was that he was a spokesperson for the protesters at Columbia earlier this year. Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University was arrested on the street by masked agents, apparently for having co-authored an article in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the Tufts administration’s position on Palestine. Badar Khan Suri at Georgetown was arrested, apparently because his father-in-law had over a decade ago worked in an advisory capacity for a Hamas leader. Like Khalil, Suri is married to a US citizen. A Korean student at Columbia who has lived in the US since the age of 7 and is a legal permanent resident has also been targeted for arrest and deportation, apparently for having participated in the Palestine protests. There have been other reports of arrests of students who have not been named, including two who have self-deported because they preferred leaving the country of their own accord to undergoing detention. In the above-named cases, no evidence has been presented by the administration or emerged from elsewhere of support by the individuals in question for Hamas or expressions of anti-semitism. Nor have any of the individuals been charged with crimes (the Korean student was arrested but never charged).

This is clearly an authoritarian crackdown on first amendment rights. For anyone who’s ever lived in a repressive society, a chill of recognition almost automatically passes down the spine. There is a kind of gratuitous, arrogant cruelty about these actions that smacks of tyrannical rule.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that, in all, he has signed more than 300 deportation orders, most related to the Palestine protests. He called the students “lunatics” and said, “I think it’s crazy to invite students into your country that are coming onto your campus and destabilizing it…. We gave you a visa to come and study and get a degree, not to become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.”

In some cases, immigration authorities have hurried to transport the arrestees to detention facilities in Lousiana, and the Department of Justice then tells a court that has blocked such a move that it has already taken place before the court order. The DoJ apparently believes Lousiana courts will be more sympathetic to their case and wishes to isolate the detainees.

And while some are moved to Louisiana, in another case, the administration deported about 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, once again apparently trying to skirt court orders stopping the deportations. The administration claims the deportees are gang members, but as with the accusations against the students, virtually no evidence of that has been presented. (In one case, that of a makeup artist, the allegation appears quite far-fetched. In another case, a judge has ordered the US government to return one deportee to the US after it was found that ICE arrested and deported him despite the fact that a do-not-deport order granted him legal leave to remain in the US.) Instead, the people have been deported with no due process, and under the eighteenth-century Alien Enemy Act which previously has only been invoked at times of war.

On top of these flagrant abuses that have more than a whiff of authoritarianism about them, the Trump administration has also ended TPS for Venezuelans and Haitians as well as so-called CHNV parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. (On March 31, a judge temporarily blocked the order ending TPS for Venezuelans.) Trump has also paused Uniting for Ukrainians, another temporary program, and it’s said he’ll make a decision on whether or not to end it in April. Currently, 240,000 Ukrainians who have escaped war are in the US under that program. Altogether, more than 1.8 million people are in the US under these programs. It’s worth noting that all of them were initiated with the objective of protecting people from persecution and violence, and in both this respect and the fact that they are temporary, they are similar to DED.

Given all this, you could excuse Hong Kongers in the US for feeling jumpy, even if we’ve so far flown under the administration’s radar. But the administration is volatile and unpredictable, and appears uninterested in or actively hostile to protecting the human rights of those it targets for deportation, even in cases where the accused clearly have the legal right to remain in the US. Its approach to the law appears to be, Act first and deal with the legal repercussions later.

As it turned out, the Hong Konger in question was released after several hours in detention. Behind the scenes, many people were working on that individual’s behalf.

In the expectation that more cases of this kind could occur, Hong Kong advocacy groups issued a travel advisory to Hong Kongers on DED, suggesting they reconsider non-essential travel abroad or to US territories outside the US customs zone.

This is the new normal under Trump.

Meanwhile, the sword of Damocles continues to hang over DED for Hong Kongers.

So far, the tactic of Hong Kong advocacy groups in DC has been to focus squarely on advocating on behalf of Hong Kongers vis-a-vis immigration. That makes sense: that’s their job.

Outside of DC, Hong Kongers as a collective have had almost nothing to say publicly about the issue of immigration. Shouldn’t Hong Kongers begin to see their situation as similar to those of other at-risk immigrant groups?

This doesn’t have to mean embracing the “immigrants’ rights” movement as a whole but should mean at the very least standing up for due process in immigration cases, opposing deportations of students and permanent residents, and calling for comprehensive immigration reform which should include sufficient funding to rapidly process asylum claims, and rational, consistent policies that recognize US interests in allowing a variety of forms of controlled immigration as well as US prerogatives in clamping down on various forms of illegal immigration (much of which currently occurs due to flaws and inadequacies in the immigration system).

While Hong Kong advocacy groups need to maintain a narrow focus in order to be effective, Hong Kongers should look up and have a much broader perspective on the issue of immigration, not least of all because it’s in our self-interest to see our situation as part of a larger whole.

This is definitely one of those moments that reminds of the famous Martin Niemöller adage: There’s a tendency to think, That has nothing to do with us, until they come for you.