Trump presses ahead on deportations

US President Donald Trump is pushing ahead with tightening immigration laws in the country, according to official guidelines released on Tuesday.

The guidelines widen the net for deporting undocumented immigrants from the country, expanding the definition for investigation to include almost everybody who has come into the country without documentation.

The guidelines leave protection put in place by former president Barack Obama for immigrants known as "dreamers" who entered the US without documentation as children.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) guidance to immigration agents is part of a broader border security and immigration enforcement plan in executive orders that Trump signed on January 25.

Former president Barack Obama issued an executive order in 2012 that protected 750,000 immigrants whose parents had brought them into the country without documentation.

TRT World's Lorna Shaddick in New York has more on the story.

Hiring more agents

Many of the instructions will not be implemented immediately because they depend on Congress, a public comment period or negotiations with other nations, government officials said.

The guidance also calls for the hiring of 10,000 more US Immigration and Customs (ICE) agents and 5,000 more US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.

The DHS will need to publish a notice in the Federal Register subject to review in order to implement one part of the plan that calls on ICE agents to increase the number of immigrants who are not given a hearing before being deported.

The new rules would subject undocumented immigrants who cannot show they have been in the country for more than two years to "expedited removal."

Currently, only migrants apprehended near a US border who cannot show they have been in the country more than 14 days are subject to rapid removal.

Mexico has objected to the new rules as unworkable, as many people the US wants to send back across the border are not from Mexico.