Immigrant order causing some confusion
Will parents still face prosecution?
McALLEN, Texas — The Trump administration has scaled back a key element of its zero-tolerance immigration policy amid a global uproar over the separation of more than 2,300 migrant families, halting the practice of turning over parents to prosecutors for charges of illegally entering the country.
Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said Monday that President Donald Trump’s order last week to stop splitting immigrant families at the border required a temporary halt to prosecuting parents and guardians, unless they had a criminal history or the child’s welfare was in question. He insisted the White House’s zero tolerance policy toward illegal entry remained intact.
Mr. McAleenan’s comments came shortly after Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration’s tactics in a speech in Nevada and asserted
that many children were brought to the border by violent gang members.
Mr. Sessions also said federal prosecutors would continue to criminally prosecute adults caught crossing the border. But Border Patrol agents must refer cases for prosecution.
Together, their remarks added to the nationwide confusion as mothers and fathers struggled to reunite families that were split up by the government and sometimes sent to different parts of the country.
Families are growing increasingly frustrated in trying to reunite with their children after weeks apart.
A mother from Guatemala wiped tears from her eyes Monday as she told reporters in El Paso, Texas, about her 4-year-old son being taken away after they crossed the border.
The boy ended up at a shelter in New York. When the mother contacted a social worker to speak with her son, she was told that the child was angry and didn’t want to talk because he believed his mother had abandoned him.
The mother was one of five parents who described their ordeals to reporters in El Paso. Speaking Spanish and all wearing ankle bracelets, the parents said they have not been told when they will see their sons and daughters again.
Addressing reporters in Texas, Mr. McAleenan said he stopped sending cases of parents charged with illegally entering the country to prosecutors “within hours” after Mr. Trump signed an executive order last week to cease the separations.
The commissioner and Mr. Sessions insisted that the administration’s policy remains in effect, even though immigrant parents are no longer being prosecuted under the new guidelines Mr. McAleenan said he is working on a plan to resume prosecutions.
“We can work on a plan where adults who bring kids across, who violate our laws, who risk their lives at the border could be prosecuted without an extended separation from their children,” he said. “We’re looking at how to implement that now.”
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders stressed that the administration’s reversal was only temporary because the government is running out of resources.
“We’re going to run out of space,” she said. “We’re going to run out of resources to keep people together.”
Providing a glimpse of relief, Mr. McAleenan said border apprehensions in June were trending “lower” from previous months but he declinedto be more specific until numbersare released July 8.
Speaking at a schoolsafety conference in Reno, Mr. Sessions cast the children as victims of a broken immigration system and urged Congress to act.
While hundreds of protesters rallied outside a hotel-casino, the attorney general said more than 80 percent of children crossing the border arrive alone, without parents or guardians, and are “often sent with a paid smuggler. We can only guess how many never make it to our border during that dangerous journey.”
He claimed the MS-13 gang “is recruiting children who were sent here as unaccompanied minors, and some are brought to help replenish the gang. And they are terrorizing immigrant schools and communities from Los Angeles to Louisville to Long Island to Boston. They are able to do so because we do not have a secure southwest border.”
He said five children had been found at the border carrying a combined 35 pounds of fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid drug blamed for an epidemic of overdose deaths nationwide.
Mr. McAleenan’s remarks followed an announcement last week by the federal public defender’s office in El Paso that federal prosecutors would no longer bring criminal charges against parents entering the U.S. if they had their child with them.
Amid the confusion, some Democratic members of Congress reiterated their frustrations that the Trump administration had not released its plan for reunifying families.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut was among those who toured a shelter at the Tornillo border crossing in West Texas. “I think there is very, very powerful consensus on both sides of the aisle that reunification should be done immediately,” Mr. Blumenthal said.
U.S. defense officials said the administration had chosen two military bases in Texas to house detained migrants. The officials identified the bases as Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about a pending announcement..
The exact process to reunite families has been unclear because migrants are first stopped by Customs and Border Protection. Then children are transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, while adults are detained through Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is under the Department of Homeland Security.