The Electronic Nationality Verification Program: An Overview

One of the tools developed by the Trump administration to rapidly deport migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala and Hondorus is the Electronic Nationality Verification (ENV) program. Since 2019, the government has used ENV to rapidly deport thousands of people, often silently with almost no public information on the program. This fact sheet describes the ENV program, who it affects and highlights concerns regarding the program. These include: lack of government transparency, increased risk of error due to rapid processing time and blindness to migrants’ fear of persecution upon deportation to their countries of origin. It is unknown if the program will expand to include other countries in the future, or what the effects on migrants have been since 2019. To address these issues, the authors recommend increased government transparency and greater consideration of the factors that cause people to flee their countries. (Katelin Reger for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)