Trump plan to lock up families is heartless, inhumane
The Trump administration has asked a court to do away with limits on how long the government can detain migrant children seeking asylum in the U.S. If that sounds unbelievable, considering the national and worldwide condemnation that forced President Donald Trump to back down on his policy of separating migrant children and parents at the border, it is.
The judge overseeing a 1997 settlement that governs the detention of migrant children isn’t likely to approve the government’s request. The proposal, announced last Thursday, appears to be a cynical stunt aimed at firing up anti-immigration Trump voters as the midterm elections loom.
Even so, it is reprehensible. To suggest that families should be stuck in the unnatural and unhealthy confines of a government detention center until their asylum requests are adjudicated — which can take years — shows how little regard the administration has for either the humanity or the practicality of its antiimmigration drive.
Detaining children with their parents would, of course, be less cruel than separating them, but it still would inflict lasting trauma on many. It also would be expensive, requiring the government to build detention facilities for hundreds of families. And such an undertaking invites abuse; an investigation by the Arizona Daily Star found violence, sexual abuse and prisonlike conditions in existing centers for detaining families and unaccompanied minors.
Expanding the system overnight would only make the problems worse.
And for what? To justify indefinite detention, Homeland Security Secretary Kristjen Nielsen said, “Today, legal loopholes significantly hinder the department’s ability to appropriately detain and promptly remove family units that have no legal basis to remain in the country.”
Many of those are like the 25-year-old woman from El Salvador profiled recently by Dispatch Reporter Danae King. The woman and her 7-year-old son, fleeing a gang that had killed her brother and threatened her and her family, were separated at the border in Arizona.
They were relatively lucky and were reunited after two months and released on parole. They live with a relative in Columbus, the mother wearing an electronic ankle cuff to monitor her whereabouts. She has to check in with immigration officials every few weeks.
For decades, this was the typical approach to families seeking asylum — releasing them to relatives or other sponsors while their cases are considered.
Critics complain that it allowed too many undocumented asylum-seekers to disappear into the population, thwarting justice. But those equipped with ankle monitors have a high rate of compliance.
Allowing families like this woman and her son to stay with relatives or other sponsors is not just humane, it is vastly more sensible than a massive, hurried-up project to build detention centers, inviting corruption and abuse.
Trump officials claim that locking up families indefinitely will solve a problem by discouraging them from coming. But the desperation of parents facing political persecution or gang violence is boundless.
A saner response would be to take the money Trump is willing to spend on punishment and use it instead to expand the court system needed to get through cases faster, to decide who has a legitimate case and who doesn’t.
That wouldn’t satisfy Trump’s hardest-core base, but it would be humane, just and practical.