Say someone enters the US, on whatever type of temporary visa. They make no attempt to gain permenant resident status; they just overstay their visa. They get found out, and sent back to whatever nation they’re from.
What happens? Are they simply told by the government that they need to leave? Are they escorted to the airport to make sure they do leave? What if they can’t afford transportation on their own?
Just a bizarrely random thing I was wondering about…
They go home.
They’re taken into custody and put on a plane. At taxpayer expense.
If the USA’s policy is the same as Ireland’s, the taxpayer has to stump up for three FIRST CLASS air fares to the port from which the illegal entrant embarked: one for the illegal entrant and one each for the two escorting police officers (gardai).
I know that most illegal entrants to Ireland have to be returned to airports in Europe, but occasionally they have to be taken back to, say, South Africa and that means at least one night’s accommodation, plus other expenses, for the accompanying gardai.
Unfortunately for the two gardai, they have slum it in economy when they travel home.
I’m an airline pilot.
In the US, the relevant agency (was INS; I forget their new PATRIOT-inspired name) buys the deportee a coach ticket (at a steep discount) and escorts them to the airplane, where they board as a regular passenger. Once they disappear down the jetway, the goons leave.
Unbelievably, there are NO restrictions on how many deportees can be put on a single flight. So the next time you get on a flight from the US to a popular country-of-origin for illegal immigration, consider that several, maybe even a dozen, of the people on that plane really, really, don’t want to be there and don’t want it to go where it’s scheduled to go.
The gov’t refuses to put guards (“escorts”) on board to save money, and the airlines are grateful for the revenue and don’t want to make waves with their biggest single customer.
The various pilot & flight attendant unions are the only groups trying to raise this as an issue, but they’ve been crying in the wilderness for 15 years now to no effect. The cynical prediction is the issue will get solved only after the first deadly hijacking.
If a deportee is a criminal, not merely an illegal immigrant, then usually they’re escorted to the destination city, i.e. handled more like a prisoner than a deportee. But not always.
Seosamh could a Brit claim to be from Australia get deported from Eire? A first class ticket to Australia would be prety good 
It’d be pretty damned hard for a Brit to get deported from Eire. The EU and all that. 
They’d probably want some evidence that the country being deported to would accept the deportee, e.g. an Australian passport. If a person who is a citizen of country A is being deported from country B, is country C likely to want to admit them? However, countries generally do accept their own citizens.
True enough. That might work if you entered Ireland from Australia, showed an Australian passport and did something naughty.
By the way: please do NOT call it “Eire” unless you are speaking in Irish!!!
A friend of mine got deported from the US to the UK in the 1980s (customs officials found a letter from his mother asking his father, who lived in Texas, to find him a job for the summer). When he got home, he received a bill from the government charging him for the cost of the flight - one business class fare, even though he flew economy.
However, latterly, in some jurisdictions at least (according to my missus, who worked for Air France and United Airlines) if the passenger gets deported, the airline has to foot the bill, hence sometimes they have boarding restrictions that exceed immigration requirements.
I know you aked specifically about the U.S., but I know someone who overstayed their tourist visa in Germany (normally valid for three months). They spent a year in Germany and were basically caught when they took public transport without buying a ticket. Someone from the public transport company came on the train and checked if everyone had a valid ticket. Since this person didn’t have one, they had to pay a sixty Euro fine, and also show some ID. Since their ID was their passport and there was a clear entry stamp (from a year ago) and no long term visa stamp in the passport the police were called.
This person was then held at the police station for a few hours while all the paperwork was done and the passport checked vor validity, etc. Since this person did not commit any crimes during their stay in Germany, they were then given a week to leave the country. They were given a paper that they had to have signed by the “Bundesgrenzschutz” (the German border police) when they left the country. If they did indeed leave the country after a week, they could enter the country as a tourist again without problems. However, if they overstayed a visa a second time, there would be no mercy ruling, and they would be deported directly, and declared “persona non grata”.
If they did not leave the country within the week, the police would put out an arrest warrant, and they would be deported when found. Deportation would then mean that the taxpayer would have to pay for a ticket. All in all I think it’s a good idea. At least it leaves the chance of saving some tax payer money and hassle. Plus, it’s better for the person who has to leave when they leave with a relatively clean record.
I know someone who was working in the States and was deported because his company messed up his papers, which meant that one half of his visa expired before the other half. He was shackled, fully searched, and then put on the first plane back to the UK, at his own expense.
Well, for some reason the INS completely ignored that basic rule in this case. For some reason they deported a Canadian citizen to India. 
What a bunch of :wallyes!
The only excuse is that they thought the Canadian passport might be fake. But why didn’t they get in touch with a Canadian consular official or a Canadian immigration official to see if the passport was vaild and Canada would accept her before sending her back to India? And these people are protecting the security of the US!
Citizenship and Immigration Services (C.I.S.). For the first few months after merger with the Department of Homeland Security, it was the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (B.C.I.S.), but they dropped the “bureau.” Bizarre, like all those oddly named Canadian agencies.
I’m somewhat inclined to doubt that all those who receive such a bill actually pay it.
It’s even more complicated than that. Although CIS inherited most of the administrative/adjudicative functions of the INS (naturalization, etc), the detention and removal of illegal aliens to their country of origin is the responsibility of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Office of Dentention and Removal Operations (DRO). Entry inspection and border patrol functions (which net most apprehensions) fall under the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Asylum petitions and other legal immigration appeals are heard by the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), which is under the Department of Justice (DOJ). And let us not forget that the custody of unaccompanied alien juveniles is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Adminstration for Children and Families’ Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Division of Unaccompanied Children Services.
Long story short, if you’re in this country illegally you can get passed around like a bottle of Boone’s Farm at a junior high party.
Something I’ve allways wondered about is deporting people trying to escape from a country with a repressive government or lots of armed conflict, like Cuba or Haiti.
Are we (the USA) sending these people to a government who will punish, or even kill them for trying to escape? Yes, this might sound like a rediculous question, but I am curious.
So, what is to prevent a US citizen from buying a one-way ticket to Paris, and then just being deported back?
Can you buy one-way tickets?
That’s what asylum’s all about.