What is removal?
Until IIRAIRA (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996) was enacted, the Immigration Service and the law drew sharp distinctions between deportation proceedings and other removal proceedings called exclusion, forcing immigration law professionals to study closely grounds of inadmissibility, excludability, deportability, and the links and shared spaces among them. With the passage of IIRAIRA these distinctions were made less important by recognizing that both types of proceedings had the same end goal—the expulsion of certain aliens. As such, proceedings to expel an alien from the United States are now called simply Removal Proceedings.