US abandons ‘zero tolerance’ policy

More migrants dying from heat on Mexico border, patrol agency says

WASHINGTON — The director of US border control has said migrant parents crossing in from Mexico illegally will for now no longer be referred for prosecution, US media reported, effectively suspending a key plank of the “zero tolerance” policy.

US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, who made the announcement on Monday to reporters in Texas, and other officials insisted however that the policy remains in effect.

McAleenan said that he stopped referring parents for prosecution shortly after US President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order ending the policy of separating families entering the country illegally.

The policy of separating children from their parents — including toddlers and even babies — drew scorn in the United States and around the world and forced Trump to make a rare retreat.

The president did, however, congratulate himself for ending a much-criticized policy that he was responsible for.

McAleenan said the reason for suspending prosecution of parents was in fact Trump’s order and that his agency does not have detention space for all the families coming across the border.

“We’re not prosecuting those parents,” he said.

According to The New York Times, the official said his agency and the Justice Department should agree on a policy “where adults who bring their kids across the border — who violate our laws and risk their lives at the border — can be prosecuted without an extended separation from their children”.

Border control agents will continue to refer for prosecution single adults who cross over illegally. They will also separate children from adults if the child is in danger or if the adult has a criminal record, McAleenan said.

The border control chief also said he is working on a plan to resume prosecution of parents who cross over with kids.

Bottom line

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders insisted the zero tolerance policy remained in effect, at least officially.

She said the bottom line was the government lacks the means to detain all the families crossing the border.

“We’re not changing the policy,” Sanders said. “We’re simply out of resources.”

The US government said on Monday that the number of migrants dying from extreme heat on the US-Mexico border rose 55 percent in the last nine months after an increase in unaccompanied children and families trying to enter the US illegally.

Heat-related deaths, the main cause of migrant fatalities on the US southwest border, rose to 48, up from 31 over the same period in 2017, said US Customs and Border Patrol spokesman Salvador Zamora.

The death toll is expected to rise in the triple-digit heat of summer months as vulnerable, unacclimatized immigrants attempt to cross harsh environments, putting border fatalities on track for a year-on-year increase in 2018, Zamora said.

The Border Patrol recorded a 12 percent year-on-year rise in immigrant arrests in the eight months to May 31, Zamora said.

“We are geared up to surpass last year’s heat-related deaths and the summer is just beginning,” he said in a telephone interview. “The demographics of the illegal aliens we are apprehending, the family units, the unaccompanied children, they’re a lot more vulnerable.”

Until four years ago, the vast majority of migrants arrested at the border were Mexicans. With improved economic conditions in Mexico, their number has fallen, as have overall arrests on the border, which dropped to 303,916 in 2017, down 26 percent from 2016, according to Border Patrol data.

Immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador now top the list of people arrested at the southern border, according to US government data.