Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Trump policy causes scramble
Morning tweet jolts Republicans
McALLEN, Texas — Federal authorities on Friday, two days after President Donald Trump ordered an end to the separation of families at the border, cast about for detention space to keep them together, leaving hundreds of parents in the dark on when they would be reunited with their children.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a notice saying it is looking into creating 15,000 beds for use in detaining families. A day earlier, the Pentagon agreed to provide space for as many as 20,000 people on U.S. military bases.
Beyond that, however, there was nothing but
frustration and worry for many of the parents separated from their children and placed in detention centers for illegally entering the country over the past several weeks.
Some parents struggled to get in touch with youngsters being held in many cases hundreds of miles away, including New York and the Chicago area. Some said they didn’t even know where their children were.
Trump took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling “phony stories of sadness and grief.”
He held an event at the White House on Friday with 15 people who had lost family members due to crimes committed by people in the U.S. illegally. The White House identified only one of the crimes, a drunk-driving death, as perpetrated by a person who crossed the border illegally as a child.
The president said it was “very unfair” for the public to focus on families divided by his now-abandoned border enforcement policy instead of American families hurt by violence committed by people in the country unlawfully. Their families, he said, are “permanently separated.”
“You hear the other side, you never hear this side,” he said.
More than 2,300 children were taken from their families at the border in recent weeks. A senior Trump administration official said that about 500 of them have since been reunited.
Trump’s decision to stop separating families, announced Wednesday after a fierce international outcry, has led to confusion and uncertainty along the border.
Federal agencies are working to set up a centralized reunification process for all remaining children at a detention center in Texas, said the senior administration official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said it is unclear how families will be reunified.
“It’s a big question. There have not been a lot of answers,” Henry Lucero, a director of field operations, said at a forum in Weslaco, Texas.
TWEET JARS REPUBLICANS
For the past week, Trump has demanded changes in U.S. immigration laws and encouraged Congress to act with urgency. But Friday morning, he appeared to give up hope that the Republican-controlled Congress could succeed in passing an immigration bill this year.
“Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November,” he tweeted. “Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solve this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!”
His advice is likely to kill current efforts to pass a measure that had little chance of succeeding.
“You just fear that tweet in the morning,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., a supporter of efforts to help “Dreamers,” people brought to the U.S. illegally as children. She said members think, “The day’s not over. Heck, it’s not even noon yet. How many times could he change his mind?”
“Members are not going to walk that walk if the president is not going to support them through the fire,” said Rep. Dennis Ross, a Florida Republican who isn’t seeking re-election.
Rep. Ryan Costello, a Pennsylvania Republican who also isn’t seeking re-election, said Trump’s comments stalled any momentum immigration legislation may have had and take away an incentive for those who were on the fence.
“Trump based so much on having the wall and here it was on a platter, along with the [agriculture] provisions we really need,” Costello said. “And he just torpedoed it.”
Some lawmakers pushed back against Trump on Friday, and vowed to continue to work on building a consensus on immigration.
“I respectfully disagree,” Rep. Leonard Lance, a New Jersey Republican, said on MSNBC. “We should continue to work on it. Work on it today in the Congress and work on it next week as well. I want to solve this problem as quickly as possible.”
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the chamber would press ahead on legislation next week. Differences between conservative and moderate Republicans delayed a vote initially planned for Thursday.
“I think it’s important that the House be able to show we can take the action,” said McCarthy, R-Calif.
“We’re not giving up,” said No. 3 House GOP leader Steve Scalise, R-La.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he “absolutely” would continue the immigration push.
“I don’t think it will affect the mood of members who got very close yesterday and want to continue,” he said.
Even if the House can pass legislation, it’s unlikely to get through the Senate and continue on to Trump’s desk. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has indicated that he’s not inclined to make another attempt at comprehensive immigration legislation this year, and with Republicans holding a slim 5149 majority, Democrats have enough votes to block any bill that doesn’t meet their demands.
A bipartisan group of senators on the Judiciary Committee, including three who’ve authored key family-retention legislation, agreed to meet Monday to start seeking consensus on a bill focused solely on stopping the family separations. So far, though, Republicans and Democrats have been far apart, with lawmakers introducing bills that are drawing only party-line support.
EASING UP ON FAMILIES
In the meantime, federal authorities appear to be easing up on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all adults caught illegally entering the U.S. — though the Justice Department flatly denied there has been any change.
The federal public defender’s office for the region that covers El Paso to San Antonio said in an email that prosecutors will no longer charge parents with illegally entering the U.S. if they have children with them.
Outside the federal courthouse in McAllen, immigration attorney Efren Olivares said 67 people were charged Friday morning with illegal entry, but none were parents with children. He said it was the first time since May 24 that that happened in McAllen.
“It appears that this is a consequence of a change in policy by the government,” he said.
In Arizona, the federal public defender’s office in Tucson quickly put together a legal education class for attorneys and advocates on how to handle cases of separated families. The course was put together quickly to help attorneys understand what they can do to help.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only three facilities nationwide — two in Texas, one in Pennsylvania — that can be used to detain families, and they have a combined 3,300 beds.
The one in Dilley, Texas, opened in 2015 on a remote site that was once an encampment for oil workers. It contains collections of cottages built around playgrounds and common areas, but also has high security.
Finding space is not the only hurdle: Under a 1997 court settlement that the Trump administration is trying to overturn, children can be held with their parents in detention centers for no more than 20 days.
Zenen Jaimes Perez of the Texas Civil Rights Project said immigrant families are still awaiting details from the administration on how parents and children are to be reunited.
“It could take a couple of months, a couple of days … but we don’t have timelines,” Jaimes Perez said. “What we need to hear is what the administration says this process is going to look like, because we don’t know.”
The group has been interviewing detainees each morning at the McAllen courthouse and entering information into a database to help keep track of parents and children held in different facilities, sometimes scattered around the country.
Olivares said it is difficult for government agencies to reunite families once they are separated because the systems that process adults and those that handle youngsters often don’t communicate with each other.
Adults accused of immigration offenses are under the authority of the Homeland Security Department, while children taken from their parents are overseen by Health and Human Services.
Meanwhile, a 7-year-old boy and his mother, separated a month ago, were reunited Friday after she sued in federal court and the Justice Department agreed to release the child.
They were reunited about 2:30 a.m. at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland, hours after the government relented.
The mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, had filed for political asylum after crossing the border with her son, Darwin, after a trek from Guatemala. She said that she cried when the two were reunited and that she is never going to be away from him again.
But a 31-year-old Brazilian man held in Cibola County Correctional Center in Milan, N.M., said he didn’t know when he would see his 9-year-old son again.
The father said in a phone interview that he spoke to his son once by phone since they were separated 26 days earlier. The man, who is seeking asylum, spoke on condition of anonymity because, he said, a gang is looking for him in Brazil for failure to pay an $8,000 debt.
The man said he worries about his son, who speaks only Portuguese.
“He cried. He was so sad,” the father said. “I had promised him it would only be three to five days.”
Information for this article was contributed by Will Weissert, Amy Taxin, Colleen Long, Elliot Spagat, Pauline Arrillaga, Astrid Galvan, Nomaan Merchant, Alan Fram, Zeke Miller, Lisa Mascaro and Laurie Kellman of The Associated Press; by Jennifer Jacobs, Lauren Etter, Billy House, Anna Edgerton, Terrence Dopp, Laura Litvan, Erik Wasson, Erik Larson, Toluse Olorunnipa and Jennifer Epstein of Bloomberg News; and by Michael D. Shear, Ron Nixon and Katie Benner of The New York Times.