Will family-separation policy return?
Number of migrant parents with children entering U.S. growing
The number of migrant parents entering the United States with children has surged to record levels in the three months since President Donald Trump ended family separations at the border, dealing the administration a deepening crisis three weeks before the midterm elections.
U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested 16,658 family members in September, the highest one-month total on record and an 80 percent increase from July, according to unpublished Homeland Security statistics obtained by The Washington Post.
Large groups of 100 or more Central American parents and children have been crossing the Rio Grande and the deserts of Arizona to turn themselves in, and by citing a fear of return, the families are typically assigned a court date and released from custody.
“We’re getting hammered daily,” said one Border Patrol agent in south Texas who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
Having campaigned on a promise to stop illegal immigration and build a border wall, Trump now faces a spiraling enforcement challenge with no ready solutions. The soaring arrest numbers — and a new caravan of Central American migrants heading north — have left him in a furious state, White House aides say.
Trump has been receiving regular updates on the border numbers, telling senior policy adviser Stephen
Miller and chief of staff John Kelly that something has to change, according to senior administration officials.
Aides including Miller and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have continually told the president that many of the children coming across the border are being smuggled illegally, and that the United States is being taken advantage of. The president’s welling anger has left him pushing once more for a reinstatement of a family separation policy in some form, which he believes is the only thing that has worked, despite the controversy it triggered.
One senior official conceded that the separations were halted to stanch political fury, but ended up sending a “clear signal” that people could cross, adding “now we’re actually getting crushed.”
GOP strategists working on the midterms said the separations were among the worst polling times of the presidency, and reinstituting the separations would sag numbers for the Republicans, who are already struggling in many close races.
Trump continues to criticize Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and has asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to work with Mexico to make it tougher for Central American immigrants to cross its southern border, inserting the issue into ongoing trade negotiations.
A senior DHS official said Wednesday that Nielsen continues to take the lead role engaging with leaders from Central America on migration issues and has been in regular contact with the Mexican government and the transition team of president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who will take office Dec. 1.
Trump has been lashing out this week at the new caravan of 2,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, who crossed into Guatemala on Monday, pushing past police roadblocks. On Tuesday, Trump threatened to cut off aid to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador if their governments “allow their citizens, or others, to journey through their borders and up to the United States.”
Trump urged GOP candidates to campaign on the issue in a tweet Wednesday morning. “Hard to believe that with thousands of people from South of the Border, walking unimpeded toward our country in the form of large Caravans, that the Democrats won’t approve legislation that will allow laws for the protection of our country. Great Midterm issue for Republicans!” he wrote.
The latest DHS figures show 107,212 “family units” members were taken into custody during the 2018 fiscal year, obliterating the previous high of 77,857 set in 2016.
There have been several senior-level meetings at the White House about the numbers, administration officials say, where Miller has channeled the president’s frustration.
Miller is pushing for a more aggressive stance, including changes at U.S. ports of entry that would make it tougher for asylumseeking Central Americans to gain admission.
Another option under consideration, known as “binary choice,” would detain migrant families together and give parents a choice — stay in immigration jail with their child for months or years as their asylum case proceeds, or allow their child to be assigned to a government shelter while a relative or guardian can apply to gain custody.
Some Homeland Security officials remain wary of the proposal and the potential blowback it could bring, and they lack the detention space to accommodate the record wave of parents and children coming across. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has about 3,300 detention beds at three “family residential centers,” but five times as many parents and children are crossing each month.