Policy on immigrant children explained
We clarify the laws that govern how kids are dealt with at the border
After news reports that the government couldn’t account for nearly 1,500 immigrant children, some people wondered how this could happen — and who was at fault?
Question: Did the Trump administration separate children from their parents at the border, then lose track of the children?
Answer: No. The 1,475 children arrived at the U.S. border alone, without their parents. Most of the children came from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, fleeing violence and turmoil in their home countries.
Under U.S. law, unaccompanied minors cannot be deported right away. They are placed with sponsors, who are typically close relatives such as parents, siblings or aunts and uncles that live in the USA. About 10% of the time, the minors are placed with people who aren’t related to them.
Q: Does the government know where the children are?
A: No, but Steven Wagner, acting assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the children are not “lost.”
After a child is placed with a sponsor, Wagner said, HHS is no longer “legally responsible.”
“Out of an abundance of caution,” he said, the agency tried to check in on thousands of children by calling their sponsors. In 1,475 cases, nobody picked up the phone.
He said many sponsors did not answer the phone because they were undocumented immigrants themselves and did not want to talk with federal agents. Wagner said that does not mean the children are missing or in danger.
“There’s no reason to believe that anything has happened to the kids,” he said. “If you call a friend and they don’t answer the phone, you don’t assume that they’ve been kidnapped.”
Q: What is the government’s policy on illegal immigration?
A: The Trump administration announced this month that there would be a “zero tolerance” policy for families trying to cross the border illegally.
“If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. “If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”
Children have been placed in foster care when their parents were criminally charged with an immigration violation.
“The underlying policies ... have not changed,” White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said Tuesday.
People who present themselves at U.S. borders are allowed to claim asylum. The administration is taking a more restrictive stance on this. Sessions has railed against the asylum system, which he said is abused by immigrants and “dirty immigration lawyers.”
In many cases, the government denies asylum claims and treats those cases as criminal. This can lead to children being separated from families.
Officials said human smugglers abuse U.S. law on asylum, as well as policies on how to handle families crossing the border together. The administration called on Congress to change the law to reduce illegal immigration and child smuggling.
“The children smuggling trade would be shut down if we could close these loopholes,” Miller said.
The American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration in February on behalf of asylum seekers in California who had their children taken from them. A federal judge is likely to rule on that case in the coming weeks.
“There’s no reason to believe that anything has happened to the kids. If you call a friend and they don’t answer the phone, you don’t assume that they’ve been kidnapped.” Steven Wagner Department of Health and Human Services
Q: Can families stay together?
A: The policies about placing unaccompanied minors with sponsors and separating children from their families go back to the administration of President George W. Bush.
In 2016, when Barack Obama was president, a Senate Homeland Security subcommittee released a report that said department officials failed to establish procedures that protected unaccompanied minors. According to that report, children were placed with traffickers who forced them to work on egg farms in Marion, Ohio.
Trump administration officials said it’s time to change the laws to ensure for quicker, safer and more humane deportation policies that allow families to stay together and face deportation together.
Miller said Congress needs to increase the number of immigration detention centers, so families can be incarcerated together as they await deportation.