The tolerance is zero; the typical fee is $10
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration border crackdown that separated thousands of children from their parents is built on a mountain of small-time criminal prosecutions that typically end with people sentenced to spend no additional time in jail and pay a $10 fee, according to a USA TODAY analysis of thousands of cases.
The “zero tolerance” push along the U.S. border with Mexico was meant to deter migrants by bringing criminal charges against everyone caught entering the U.S.
It also served as the legal machinery for splitting children from parents who accompanied them across the border. Since the crackdown began in May, border agents have separated about 2,300 children from their families.
The crackdown produced a highvelocity assembly line of prosecutions that sped thousands of migrants through crowded federal courtrooms to answer for the misdemeanor of having entered the U.S. illegally.
An examination of thousands of pages of federal court records shows that those cases are seldom more than a symbolic undertaking.
In many cases, migrants are taken from an immigration holding facility and bused to federal court, where they quickly plead guilty to having entered the country illegally and are sentenced to whatever time they have already spent in the government’s custody and a $10 court fee. Then they’re returned to immigration authorities to be processed for deportation.
“There is no reason for the government to do this other than to be cruel and send the message that you are not welcome,” said Marjorie Meyers, the chief federal public defender in southern Texas. “The thing that’s just horrible is that they’re using it to take the children.”
USA TODAY examined 2,598 written judgments in border-crossing cases filed in federal courts along the border since mid-May. In nearly 70 percent of those cases, migrants pleaded guilty and immediately received a sentence of time served, meaning they would spend no additional time in jail. Another 13 percent were sentenced to unsupervised probation, including a condition that they not illegally re-enter the United States. In both cases, that meant they would immediately be returned to immigration officials to be processed for deportation, leaving them in essentially the same position as if they had not been prosecuted.
Still, Meyers and other defense lawyers said that by the time some of their clients returned to the immigration facilities where they had been held, their children were gone.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order instructing officials to attempt to keep children with their parents. But he also left in place the zero-tolerance policy that pushed the parents into federal court.
“We don’t like to see families separated,” Trump said after signing it. “At the same time, we don’t want people coming into our country illegally. This takes care of the problem.”
Exactly how it would take care of the problem remained unclear Thursday. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that it “will continue to refer for prosecution adults who cross the border illegally.” And a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement there had been “no change” in its policy of prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally.
Still, defense lawyers said Thursday that there were hints the government might have softened its position. Meyers said the Border Patrol told her staff that they were taking people who had been caught along with their children off the docket.
Since the beginning of June, authorities have brought criminal charges against at least 4,174 people for entering the U.S. illegally along the southwest border. Hundreds of others were charged with the more serious crime of re-entering the country after having been deported.