Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
No more prosecutions:
Officials refuse to say when many children will rejoin families
U.S. border chief says parents no longer face federal court.
MCALLEN, Texas — U.S. Border Patrol agents have stopped handing parents over to the Justice Department for prosecution when they are caught crossing the border illegally with their children, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday.
The statement by Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan marked a significant step back from the “zero tolerance” policy that the Trump administration had pursued for the last two months, and resulted in more than 2,000 children being taken from their parents. President Donald Trump issued an order last week to stop separating families.
“We’re not prosecuting those parents,” McAleenan said, “because of guidance in the (executive order) to maintain family unity.”
His statement came as White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the government was starting to “run out of space” to house people apprehended crossing the border. “We’re simply out of resources,” Sanders said.
At the same time, however, the administration has refused to say when — or if — most children who were taken from their parents in recent weeks would be reunited with them.
McAleenan said 538 children who had been taken from their families for short periods but had remained in the custody of the Border Patrol have been reunited with parents.
But the fate of the considerably larger group of children who have been transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services remains uncertain.
On Saturday, the department said that as of Wednesday, it had 2,053 “separated minors” in its custody. HHS officials and the White House have declined to provide updated figures to members of Congress or the public. Lawyers working with parents to find their children say they have faced a confusing and often unresponsive bureaucracy and no assurance that families will be reunified.
Advocates for immigrants say that in some cases, parents separated from their children and detained while awaiting a hearing on a claim for asylum are being given a choice: If they want to see their children, they must withdraw their asylum claims and agree to be deported.
“They went in and told the parents if you sign this, you can get your kids back,” said Jodi Goodwin, an attorney coordinating a “rapid response team” of about 10 volunteer lawyers aiding immigrants at Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.
Under U.S. law, people who enter the country and say they fear being persecuted in their home country are entitled to a hearing to determine if their claim is valid. In many cases, immigration judges reject those claims and the migrants are deported, but thousands of asylum claims have been approved.
Trump, in a Twitter message over the weekend, suggested he opposes that process, saying that “when somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”
On Monday, he repeated that sentiment. “We want a system where, when people come in illegally, they have to go out. And a nice simple system that works,” Trump told reporters. Abolishing asylum hearings would require Congress to change the law.
Advocates for the immigrants caught up in the enforcement process have filed at least three lawsuits challenging the administration. A fourth suit has been filed by Democratic state attorneys general.
Regardless of whether an asylum claim is valid, a person who crosses the border illegally can be charged with illegal entry, a misdemeanor. The administration since early May has been insisting on prosecuting all adults who are apprehended. Typically, after a brief stay in jail, they plead guilty and are sentenced to time served. But because minors cannot be sent to an adult jail, the prosecution has served as a reason for removing children from their parents.
Now that the administration says it has reversed that policy and will detain families together while they await asylum hearings, lawyers working with families said many questions remained unanswered. Among them are how many parents had been deported without their children, whether any child has been deported or whether children have been released to family members other than their parents.
Another unanswered question is what will happen when the clock runs out on the administration’s legal authority to detain families together. Court rulings have limited the government’s authority to hold children in detention facilities to no more than 20 days. Sanders declined to say what the administration planned to do when that 20-day period expired.
“This is a temporary solution,” she said. “Hopefully, Congress will pass a law” that would resolve the issue.
The House plans to consider immigration legislation later this week, but Republican leaders have indicated they’re uncertain about having the votes to pass anything. Divisions among Republican lawmakers have stymied efforts at legislation, and Trump recently tweeted that Republicans should “stop wasting their time” on the effort.
Democrats oppose the legislation, which would limit legal immigration.
The administration is taking steps to increase its capacity to hold migrants in detention. Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White confirmed that the military has been directed to build tent camps at two bases in Texas to temporarily house migrants. The camps will be built at Ft. Bliss, an Army base in El Paso near the border, and at Goodfellow Air Force Base, which is near San Angelo in central Texas, the officials said.
The facility at Ft. Bliss will be designed to hold families with adults, while Goodfellow will be used to hold children who arrive at the U.S. border without a parent, one official said.
It’s unclear how many people the camps will be constructed to hold, although officials have said that the government was looking to build space for as many as 20,000 migrants. Initial construction of the facilities could be completed next month, one of the officials said.
On Monday, as McAleenan visited border facilities where families were being held, lawyers demanded that the government pick up the pace of reunification.
After visiting Port Isabel on Sunday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she’d seen no evidence of family reunification. She said she spoke with nine women. “In every case, they were lied to,” she said. “In every case, save one, they have not spoken with their children. And in every case, they do not know where their children are.”