Thread: Illegal alien parents can be detained but children must be released, court rules

Illegal immigrant parents can be detained but children must be released, court rules


A group of immigrants from Honduras and El Salvador who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally are stopped in Granjeno, Texas, on June 25, 2014. (Associated Press) more >

By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Updated: 8:07 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Agents can detain illegal immigrant parents who try to break into the U.S. with their children, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday, delivering a victory to one of the Obama administration’s remaining get-tough immigration policies.

But the court ruled the children themselves must be quickly released from custody and sent to live with relatives or other sponsors — a blow to the administration’s argument.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said a 1997 agreement government unaccompanied children caught at the border should also apply to children who are traveling as a family, with a parent.

The ruling will push the administration to release still more of the children surging up from Central America, but allows agents to keep the parents in detention, where the goal is to give them their day in front of an immigration judge and then deport them, if they’re not granted any relief.
“The settlement does not explicitly provide any rights to adults,” Judge Andrew D. Hurwitz said in the unanimous opinion for the court.

The issue came to a head in 2014, when tens of thousands of parents and children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala streamed north, fleeing economic poverty and rising violence back home, and enticed into the U.S. by lax enforcement policies here.
With fewer than 100 beds available for family detention, Homeland Security officials had to release most of the families, which then disappeared into the shadows along with 11 million other illegal immigrants.

Homeland Security tried to ramp up its capacity, opening new detention facilities, but activists challenged those, saying they were inhumane places for children.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee agreed, and ordered better conditions. She also ordered the children be processed and released quickly, expanding a 1997 agreement known as the Flores settlement, which had previously government only children who came without parents.

And Judge Gee said that since the agreement said children should be released to their parents, it made sense to release the parents too — giving the entire family a way out of detention.

The administration warned that would spark a new wave of illegal immigrants, and the data bears that out.

One top Justice Department immigration lawyer even said illegal immigrants are abducting children on the trip north so they can appear to be families, and take advantage of the lax policy.

In the wake of Wednesday’s ruling, activists urged the Obama administration to release parents anyway.

“This ruling confirms what we have known for a long time: that detention facilities are no place for children,” said Olga Byrne, a lawyer at Human Rights First. “The government is not complying with its obligations under Flores, and should immediately end this inhumane and unnecessary practice.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ined-children/

Homeland Security tried to ramp up its capacity, opening new detention facilities, but activists challenged those, saying they were inhumane places for children.

U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee agreed, and ordered better conditions. She also ordered the children be processed and released quickly, expanding a 1997 agreement known as the Flores settlement, which had previously government only children who came without parents.

And Judge Gee said that since the agreement said children should be released to their parents, it made sense to release the parents too — giving the entire family a way out of detention.

Would be wise if a group of politicians earned their keep by reversing the act that "makes us take in all these thousands of children at the border"; they will be a bigger drain on our social system.

WHEN WILL THEY STOP THIS! WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR OVER-BREEDERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES!

TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION - TRYANNY!

Take our tax monies and pay for them for their entire life? Were we asked if we want to take in millions of poor to be on the dole while the gov't nickel and dimes our seniors and veterans - and really any American citizen excluding the ultra rich. American citizens have to bite the bullet to pay for healthcare and if you get SICK, you need to borrow thousands.

Something is not right here. These mexicans and central americans are producing babies galore and we are paying for birthing, the mother, the child, all their future healthcare, their schooling, plus thousands $$$ in tax credits with the father not responsible for any child support. Try that American citizen dads; they will confiscate your pay check, take your drivers license away. It is a very bad joke on our citizenry.

Detained immigrant children must be released - California court

Published time: 7 Jul, 2016 04:26Edited time: 7 Jul, 2016 11:01

Immigrant children, who crossed the US border without documentation and were held in family detention centers by Homeland Security officials, must be released, the San Francisco Court of Appeals has ruled.

The ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco on Wednesday sided with immigrant plaintiffs. The case centered on the violation of a 19-year-old legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that set legal requirements for the housing of children seeking asylum or in the country illegally.

The US government has spent millions of dollars on two detention centers in Texas to cope with the flood of immigrants, who overwhelmed border authorities in the summer of 2014. Tens of thousands of families, mostly mothers with children, arrived fleeing gang and domestic violence in Central America.

A Homeland Security official said the jails were opened to house immigrants, because 70 percent of families once released never reported back to immigration officials for processing. Critics of the jails argued they were not suitable for children and that their detention violated the Flores agreement.

In July 2015, a lower court decision found the US government had violated key provisions of the court settlement that put restriction on the detention of migrant children. Since that ruling, immigration officials released hundreds of families and have been holding newly arriving families for only short durations.

The three-judge panel also ruled on Wednesday that immigration officials aren’t required to release the parents detained along with the children, according to the Associated Press.

Federal attorneys argued on appeals that the Flores settlement only applied to unaccompanied migrant minors and not children accompanied by parents or other adult family members. Plaintiffs argued the settlement applied to all children, which the 9th Circuit of Appeals sided with.

“This decision makes it clear that the Obama administration can no longer detain accompanied children for long periods of time in unlicensed, locked-down facilities,” Peter Schey, one of the lead plaintiff attorneys and president of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, told the Los Angeles Times.

With the court ruling, when the children are released and if the parents are re-detained, the children will be treated as unaccompanied minors. Once that happens, they will be turned over to the Department of Health and

Human Services and placed either with relatives or possibly a foster family in the US, while the DHS or a judge decides whether they can stay in the US.

The Department of Homeland Security reported that more than 23,000 families have been apprehended in the first five months of 2016, compared to about 13,400 in 2015 and around 30,600 in 2014. Most are from Honduras, El Salvador or Guatemala.

Detained immigrant children ordered released - California court

Hand them over into the care and custody of THEIR Embassy for deportation.

Stop the child trafficking business! Let their Country take care of them and find their parents! It is their responsibility.

NOT U.S. TAPAYERS...WE ARE NOT THE WORLD'S BABYSITTER!

Cut off all freebies and all foreign aid to those countries facilitating and allowing this SCAM and making billions off of it.

STOP TEARING AMERICAN FAMILIES APART.

KEEP THEIR FAMILY TOGETHER AND DEPORT THEM ALL!