A Boeing 767-300 plane from the US landed in the capital city Yerevan recently, bringing a group of deported Armenian citizens to Armenia.

In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am, Lara Kareyan, a lawyer and founder of the Los Angeles-based MI legal solutions agency, noted that these are people who illegally had crossed the US border after January 2024, were held in US detention centers, and regarding whom the US courts had already issued the final verdict.

“These are people who either did not appeal the court’s rulings, or simply wanted to return to their country of citizenship. There have been cases when a person was in a migration detention center and could not stand the conditions of detention, chose the option of waiving the appeal or voluntary return,” Kareyan noted.

She added that they also do not have information about how many Armenian nationals had returned to Armenia on board the aforesaid plane, but there are more than 3,000 Armenians in US immigration detention centers.

“In legal terms, nothing has changed in the United States. It’s just that as a result of the policies introduced by this administration, the regulations related to [US] immigration have become stricter. I simply advise people not to panic, and when an employee of the [US] immigration service center, for example, approaches [you] on the street, asks [you] what your immigration status is, demands [you] to submit documents, answer honestly and submit the documents. It’s about people whose political asylum cases [in the US] are in progress,” the lawyer said.

According to Kareyan, however, there is no guarantee that during the next meeting scheduled at the US immigration service, these people will not be arrested and transferred to an immigration detention center to continue the examination of their asylum claims from there.

“There have been many such cases. It’s about persons who came to the US through the Mexican border. They visit [US] immigration centers once or twice a year. The persons who came to the United States on a visa and applied for asylum do not have this problem and have no reason to worry either,” the attorney added.

President Donald Trump had earlier announced his intention to carry out a major operation to deport illegal immigrants in the US. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently reported that 3 million migrants have been deported from the US, of which 2.2 million had left voluntarily.