ICE speeds up the release in ‘catch and release’ of families

SAN DIEGO — The federal government has begun shifting the burden of managing an influx of immigrant families on the border to local organizations and cities across the southwest border.

President Donald Trump is reportedly contemplating a ban on asylum seekers on the southwest border, and he has railed against the idea of “catch and release” — detaining people who arrive at the southwest border only to let them go into the U.S. while they pursue cases in immigration court — but his administration’s latest plan for asylum-seeking families would release them more quickly.

While annual apprehensions are still below 2014, the last major surge in families and unaccompanied children, and far below totals decades ago, the number of families coming to the southwest border has increased.

Border Patrol agents apprehended more than 16,600 family members in September, the most recorded in a single month since the agency began tracking family arrivals in fiscal 2013.

In the past, when a family was in custody at the southwest border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would review a family’s plans for living in the U.S., including calling the person whom the family planned to live with and helping with travel arrangements. ICE announced this week that because of the number of families arriving, its officers will no longer conduct these reviews.

That means families will be released more quickly and in larger numbers, a policy dubbed “coordinated release” that has quietly been rolled out across the southwest since early October when it began in Arizona. It also means families may have less guidance about how to get to their final destinations so that they can show up for their court dates.

Some migrant advocates wondered if the move could have a political motive to create chaos at the border shortly before voters go to the polls in high-stakes midterm congressional elections.

Groups in Texas, where the largest numbers of families arrive, were already straining to manage increased releases they saw this week, and they worried those numbers would only go up in the coming days.

The statement that ICE officials provided explaining the policy change blamed Congress and a court ruling that says they can hold children in detention centers for up to 20 days. The Trump administrations has pushed for extended family detention and more bed space to hold all of the new arrivals until their immigration court cases finish.