STAKES ARE HIGH IN US IMMIGRATION POLICY SEE-SAW
THE US immigration agents who arrested Armando outside his Ohio home in the last northern hemisphere autumn would have had little trouble finding him. He had provided his address and fingerprints weeks earlier in a bid to get his 15-year old son out of government custody.
The boy Bryan was apprehended in July after fleeing political violence in Nicaragua and crossing the southern border illegally. Armando, who is living in the US illegally, wrestled with the risk of coming forward, especially as he had been deported before.
“I knew if I did the fingerprints, they could find me,” said Armando, 35, who has been imprisoned in Ohio as an illegal for five months. He spoke on condition that his last name not be used for fear of being targeted by a pro-government militia if deported to Nicaragua.
“I was ready to do anything for my son,” Armando said.
Armando and his attorneys contend that authorities found him with the information he supplied. Federal immigration officials would not say how he was found.
If Armando is correct, he was a victim of bad timing. This month a federal spending bill was signed into law that generally bars officials from using information gathered to vet children’s sponsors to target them for arrest and deportation.
The new restriction, the latest see-saw in US immigration policy, likely comes too late for at least 170 potential sponsors who were arrested since last year on the information they supplied. That’s when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has custody of migrant children, began exchanging information about sponsors with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which enforces immigration laws.
A DHS official, who declined to be identified, said the number of sponsors arrested was a “drop in the bucket” compared to the tens of thousands of arrests by immigration authorities each year.
Immigrant advocates welcomed the limit on use of shared information but said it couldn’t reverse the damage done to families. Nor would it necessarily reassure potential sponsors, they said.
They noted that the provision is in a spending law that expires in September and that in the meantime the two agencies wouldn’t stop exchanging information. HHS said it continues to work with DHS as part of its vetting process to ensure child safety.
People who favour restricting immigration said the new provision hampers the government’s ability to enforce immigration law.
Sponsors get “this force field of protection” around them, said Mark Krikorian, executive director at the Center for Immigration Studies. “A statutory prohibition is inexcusable.”
The controversy has been brewing since April last year when an agreement to share information about sponsors was signed between the health and immigration agencies.
Advocates for migrant children said the policy could be psychologically harmful to youngsters and intimidate sponsors.
“The real problem with the information sharing is not just that it has resulted in people being deported but that the specific design of it is to dissuade sponsors from coming forward, thereby keeping kids locked up for longer,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, an attorney for the Legal Aid Justice Center.
He said that the new legislation is unlikely to change sponsors’ reluctance to make their presence known to authorities.
In June, as conditions worsened in Nicaragua, Bryan left to join his father but was caught at the border.
In August, Armando and his family visited Bryan at a facility in upstate New York. A month later, three black SUVs pulled up outside Armando’s home. Immigration agents handcuffed him as his fiancée and children watched.
“I pray every day, especially for my kids,” he said during an interview at the Youngstown, Ohio, prison where he is being held.
Just before Christmas, after four months and 17 days in custody, Bryan was released. After visiting his father, he said: “If I hadn’t come across, none of this would have happened.”