Thread: Exclusive: Trump administration considering separating women, children at Mexico bord

Exclusive: Trump administration considering separating women, children at Mexico border

Fri Mar 3, 2017 | 8:28pm EST
By Julia Edwards Ainsley | WASHINGTON

Women and children crossing together illegally into the United States could be separated by U.S. authorities under a proposal being considered by the Department of Homeland Security, according to three government officials.

Part of the reason for the proposal is to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children, said the officials, who have been briefed on the proposal.

The policy shift would allow the government to keep parents in custody while they contest deportation or wait for asylum hearings. Children would be put into protective custody with the Department of Health and Human Services, in the "least restrictive setting" until they can be taken into the care of a U.S. relative or state-sponsored guardian.

Currently, families contesting deportation or applying for asylum are generally released from detention quickly and allowed to remain in the United States until their cases are resolved. A federal appeals court ruling bars prolonged child detention.

President Donald Trump has called for ending "catch and release," in which migrants who cross illegally are freed to live in the United States while awaiting legal proceedings.

Two of the officials were briefed on the proposal at a Feb. 2 town hall for asylum officers by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum chief John Lafferty.

A third DHS official said the department is actively considering separating women from their children but has not made a decision.

HHS and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

In a statement to Reuters, DHS said: "The journey north is a dangerous one with too many situations where children - brought by parents, relatives or smugglers - are often exploited, abused or may even lose their lives.

"With safety in mind, the Department of Homeland Security continually explores options that may discourage those from even beginning the journey," the statement said.

U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat whose district includes about 200 miles (320 km) of the border with Mexico, slammed the proposal. "Bottom line: separating mothers and children is wrong," he said in a statement.

"That type of thing is where we depart from border security and get into violating human rights," he said.

About 54,000 children and their guardians were apprehended between Oct. 1, 2016, and Jan. 31, 2017, more than double the number caught over the same time period a year earlier.

Republicans in Congress have argued women are willing to risk the dangerous journey with their children because they are assured they will be quickly released from detention and given court dates set years into the future.

Immigrant rights advocates have argued that Central America's violent and impoverished conditions force mothers to immigrate to the United States and that they should be given asylum status.

LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS

Implementing the new policy proposal "could create lifelong psychological trauma," said Marielena Hincapie, executive director at the National Immigration Law Center. "Especially for children that have just completed a perilous journey from Central America."

Hincapie said the U.S. government is likely to face legal challenges based on immigration and family law if they decide to implement the policy.

The policy would allow DHS to detain parents while complying with a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals order from July 2016 that immigrant children should be released from detention as quickly as possible. That order said their parents were not required to be freed.

To comply with that order, the Obama administration implemented a policy of holding women and children at family detention centers for no more than 21 days before releasing them.

Holding mothers in prolonged detention could also strain government resources, said Randy Capps of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based non-profit.

“You are talking about a pretty rapid increase in the detention population if you are going to do this," Capps said. "The question is really how much detention can they afford."

Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly last week ordered immigration agents to deport or criminally prosecute parents who facilitate the illegal smuggling of their children.

Many parents who arrive on the U.S.-Mexico border with their children have paid smugglers to guide them across the dangerous terrain.

(Reporting by Julia Edwards Ainsley; Additional reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Sue Horton, Ross Colvin, James Dalgleish and Lisa Shumaker)

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN16A2ES

No, you just turn them all around at the border and tell them, "SHOO". Start walking south. You call Mexican authorities and tell them they have some people to pick up, either their own citizens, or illegal aliens that invaded Mexico. SHOO!!

Rueters has proven itself to be a purveyor of false information. I would question anything they release.

According to CNN this morning, quoting a "DHS senior official", they are trying to find ways to discourage parents "basically kidnapping" their children and bringing them into our country illegally.

I do not want to pay for their children's "protective custody". Hand them over into the care and custody of their Embassy for deportation.

Let their country set up daycare for them on their soil.

Neither does Trump. Damn. Got to turn 'em around and call Mexican authorities to pick them up and work it out.

These people are nothing more than economic migrants, taking advantage of our system. The only way to stop them is to have rapid deportation hearings and actually deport them. I'm afraid that even with a wall in place, they will still find the nearest port of entry and turn themselves in.

The act that states we must take in central american children fleeing violence must be repealed. Seems to be no discussion from the admin as to square one - why are they allowed to come to our border and we must take them in. gw assured this and it is part of the open border takeover agenda. Of course obama continued it and took it one step further by claiming they are "refugees" which means a whole slew of more benefits/monies, social services with the right to petition for the nuclear family. At one point, obama declared they will receive $1700 a month, transportation to areas across the country and a smart phone. Don't know where that went but....

Repeal the act first - stop forcing us to take in central americans - people have to apply to come into our country and wait a long time too. To have these uncivilized, vicious, gang members, drug dealers, rapist of 3yr olds, killers of our youth, pouring across our border and allowed to say for a hearing yrs down the road which they won't appear for is lunacy; they should not be here period.

The entire bush family, thru many generations, has been open border, new world order advocates and the invasion of iraq was meant to spread islam to the west and open the west's borders wide into a globalist new world order. Why is Europe filled with middle eastern muslims - because of the ongoing wars creating fleeing refugees. Why take them into other countries especially in such numbers as to erase your own native blood lines. gw took in just as many muslims as obama - and he also allowed the hispanic invasion too; not just mexicans but central americans too as seen by his renewal of Wilburforce Act that has caused hundreds of thousands of dubious characters on the dole in our country. It is a farce, they are not kids but young adults and will bring their entire nuclear family eventually - it is endless amounts of poor, low ethics people. While they are awarded our monies now, they will eventually fit them into our jobs that our youth should have. The writing is on the wall with all of this importation of peoples - Americans will pay for their hispanic and muslim replacements. The video clip at link shows gw and obama's set up for this Wilburforce Act overtaking. Both lying.

Immigrant Surge Rooted in Law to Curb Child Trafficking

By CARL HULSE JULY 7, 2014

https://nyti.ms/2m7xpLZ

By Christian Roman, Carrie Halperin and Emily B. Hager on Publish Date July 7, 2014.

WASHINGTON — It was one of the final pieces of legislation signed into law by President George W. Bush, a measure that passed without controversy, along with a pension bill and another one calling for national parks to be commemorated on quarters.

“This is a piece of legislation we’re very proud to sign,” a White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, told reporters on Dec. 23, 2008, as the president put his pen to the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008, named for a 19th-century British abolitionist. “This program has been very effective around the world in trying to stop trafficking in persons.”
Now the legislation, enacted quietly during the transition to the Obama administration, is at the root of the potentially calamitous flow of unaccompanied minors to the nation’s southern border.
Originally pushed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers as well as by evangelical groups to combat sex trafficking, the bill gave substantial new protections to children entering the country alone who were not from Mexico or Canada by prohibiting them from being quickly sent back to their country of origin.

Comments

Fredda Weinberg

July 8, 2014 I read the law. None of these kids are severely trafficked, so why are they being treated like sex slaves?
Andy

July 8, 2014 Yes, immigrants are US's bane. I mean, seriously. Look around you folks. Time to 'wake up'.

Randy L.July 8, 2014

And this "crisis" displays, fully, the mentality of the illegal population: laws are meant to be abused and ignored.

Instead, it required that they be given an opportunity to appear at an immigration hearing and consult with an advocate, and it recommended that they have access to counsel. It also required that they be turned over to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the agency was directed to place the minor “in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interest of the child” and to explore reuniting those children with family members.
The Obama administration says the law is partly responsible for tying its hands in dealing with the current influx of children. Officials have suggested that the White House might seek flexibility in the law’s requirements when it asks Congress to provide emergency funds to contend with the latest immigration crisis, a request that could come as early as Tuesday. About 52,000 minors without their parents have been caught at the Southwest border since October.
“Giving the secretary of homeland security additional authority and discretion that he can use to confront that situation more efficiently, making sure that we are acknowledging the humanitarian issues that are at stake while also enforcing the law, is a priority,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Monday. “It’s the priority of this administration, and if you listen to the public comments of Democrats and Republicans, it sounds like it’s a bipartisan priority.”


President George W. Bush signing the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. Credit Charles Dharapak/Associated Press Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who helped write the measure, said the White House does not need new power to act. “That law already provides the administration with flexibility to accelerate the judicial process in times of crisis,” she said. “The administration should use that flexibility to speed up the system while still treating these children humanely, with compassion and respect.”
On Capitol Hill, Democrats said they expected that the administration’s initial request for border money would not push for changes in the trafficking law but that the White House would try to work with relevant congressional committees to eventually win revisions.
Democrats have shown reluctance to endorse narrow immigration law changes after House Republicans balked at a much more sweeping overhaul and seem hesitant to tinker too much with the William Wilberforce Act.
In a recent letter to Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said Congress must ensure that the provisions of the trafficking victims act, “which passed the House and Senate unanimously and was also signed into law by President Bush, are fully enforced, so that due process is provided to unaccompanied children and the safety and well-being of unaccompanied children is protected.”
Republicans, who are calling for changes that would make it easier to send them back, blame President Obama for the surge of children at the border, saying he provided a lure by instituting a program that deferred deportations for some immigrants who entered the nation illegally as children.

They say the effort to point to the Bush-era law is a meant to deflect attention from the administration and make both parties culpable.
Representative Jeff Fortenberry, a Nebraska Republican and a chief backer of the original bill, said multiple factors contributed to the crisis, including “exploitation of our laws, the ungoverned space in Central America, as well as the desperate poverty faced by those deciding to cross.”
“With all these factors in mind, it’s hard to think that today’s situation at the border can be directly attributed to a law that’s been in effect now for six years,” Mr. Fortenberry said.


Boys waited to make phone calls in June at a United States Customs and Border Protection center in Nogales, Ariz. Credit Pool photo by Ross D. Franklin What many can agree on is that the Wilberforce law was not enacted with the idea of dealing with the current flow of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors or providing an incentive for children to reach the border.
“It is classic unintended consequences,” said Marc R. Rosenblum, deputy director of the U.S. Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute. “This was certainly not what was envisioned.”
Given the tense partisanship that now surrounds nearly every aspect of border policy, it is hard to imagine that a bill making such substantive changes could breeze through Congress. But the trafficking measure did so in the Bush administration’s last weeks, and it did so with bipartisan backing without so much as a recorded vote in the Senate.
Advocates saw it as a breakthrough on sex trafficking after Congress had already scuttled an earlier attempt at broad immigration reform despite the strong backing of Mr. Bush.
Just two House Republicans — Representative Jeff Flake of Arizona and Representative Paul Broun of Georgia — opposed the measure when it first passed the House in 2007, but it went through Congress without opposition and with little notice in the post-election session of 2008.
Aides to Mr. Flake, now a senator, said he did not foresee the current problems but was more concerned about holding the line on federal spending at the time. He now backs revising the law. “Congress needs to change what it can, as soon as it can, to ensure that these unaccompanied minors are sent home without delay,” he said.
Immigration advocates say that they see no need for changes in the law and that the Obama administration should be able to work within the existing framework to bring some order under a law that is working to meet its original purpose.
“First and foremost,” said Wendy Young, president of Kids in Need of Defense, who was an immigration adviser to Senator Edward M. Kennedy at the time of the bill’s passage, “there was a recognition that these kids are incredibly vulnerable when they are moving across international borders alone.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/08/u...afficking.html

I agree Pres. Bush, to me, is even more culpable in the illegal situation than is Pres Obama.

Does anyone else think if perhaps the American government would stop meddling in other countries' business, there wouldn't be so many in poverty, refugees and displaced persons?

Does anyone else think if our government didn't aid and abet corporations in their rape and pillage of other countries' resources, we wouldn't have so much poverty, refugees, and displaced persons?