New confusion at D.C., border
Agencies left to interpret sudden reversal of orders
Washington — President Donald Trump’s executive order to halt family separations unleashed confusion in Washington and at the Mexico border Thursday, as Customs and Border Protection said it would stop referring such cases for prosecution and migrant parents arrived at courthouses in Texas and Arizona wearing handcuffs only to be led away without facing charges.
After a senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told The Washington Post that the agency would freeze criminal referrals for migrant parents who cross illegally with children, Justice Department officials insisted their “zero tolerance” policy remained in force and that U.S. attorneys would continue to prosecute those entering the United States unlawfully.
On Capitol Hill, an immigration bill failed to pass and a key vote on a more moderate version of the legislation was postponed. The Pentagon, meanwhile, agreed to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children on military bases in coming months. And despite the ongoing outcry over the separation of more than 2,300 migrant children from their parents since May 5, Trump administration officials gave no assurances the families would be swiftly reunited.
In scenes reminiscent of the
botched “Muslim ban” in the early days of the Trump presidency, federal agencies Thursday were largely left to interpret the sudden changes hastily ordered by the White House a day before and figure out how to implement them. A family separation system that had been planned and tested over several months vanished at the president’s pen, with no stated plan to reverse its effects.
The administration’s aboutface leaves intact its “zero tolerance” policy toward those who break the law, but the senior Customs and Border Protection official, asked to explain how the government would change enforcement practices, said Border Patrol agents were instructed to stop sending parents who arrive in the United States with children illegally to federal courthouses for prosecution.
“We’re suspending prosecutions of adults who are members of family units until ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) can accelerate resource capability to allow us to maintain custody,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to explain how the agency has interpreted and implemented Trump’s order.
A Justice Department representative said prosecutions would continue, but the decision to refer migrants for criminal charges after crossing illegally rests with the U.S. Border Patrol.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has embodied the administration’s stance on illegal immigration and was the principal advocate for its zero-tolerance policy, said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network that the objective was not to take children away from their parents. “It hasn’t been good, and the American people don’t like the idea that we are separating families,” the attorney general told CBN Thursday. “We never really intended to do that.”
When Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy in May, he warned that families who cross illegally would be split up. The move was condemned by multiple faith groups, including members of Sessions’s denomination, the United Methodist Church.
Maureen Franco, federal public defender for the Western District of Texas, informed defense lawyers Thursday that federal prosecutors in the jurisdiction were no longer bringing illegal entry charges against parents who cross the border with children, the El Paso Times reported.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, but officials said repeatedly Thursday that the”zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigration had not changed.
At two federal courthouses in Texas, large groups of migrants arrived to face charges Thursday — as the thousands of others have in recent weeks — but they were abruptly removed from court without being prosecuted.
In McAllen, Texas, 17 migrants who arrived to face criminal proceedings were told by their public defender that the charges were dropped, according to Efren Olivares, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Commission, who was in the courtroom. Olivares said he and others were interviewing the parents in an effort to reunite them with their children, adding that the parents had been weeping and begging for help before the announcement. It was unclear what would happen to the parents next, or when they would be reunited with their children, Olivares said.
Justice Department officials denied that any charges were dismissed, but they did not say why the migrants were taken to the courthouse but not prosecuted.
“The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas (SDTX) did not dismiss any immigration violation cases in McAllen federal court today,” the U.S. attorney’s office there said in a statement. “Media reports alleging SDTX cases were dropped or dismissed are inaccurate and misleading.”
A similar scene played out Thursday in a federal courtroom in El Paso.
In western Arizona, Border Patrol agents stopped separating parents from their children as of Thursday morning, according to acting chief patrol agent Carl Landrum, who added that parents crossing the border illegally with their children would no longer be referred for prosecution for illegal entry, although they would still face consequences because they would be transferred to ICE for deportation.
“What we are trying to avoid is saying that you were not going to be prosecuted,” he said. “That message would be very bad and that would translate to an increased number of people coming to the border and trying to enter illegally.”