San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Migrant kids camp emptying out in Fla.
immigrant rights’ project at Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm in Los Angeles.
The program is one way the Trump administration is seeking to curtail the arrival of tens of thousands of Central American families each month on the U.S.Mexico border, many seeking asylum. Federal courts have blocked several efforts to limit asylum for the families, including rules that would prevent most migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. if they passed through another country first.
Speeding up court hearings aims to prevent migrant families from setting down roots while they wait to find out whether they qualify for asylum.
Immigrants can get permits to work legally in the United States once their asylum applications are pending before a judge for six months, which many with fasttracked cases won’t get to do, lawyers said.
The goal is to “disincentivize families — where an overwhelming majority of cases don’t qualify for relief, but instead end with removal orders — from making the treacherous journey to the United States,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.
Immigration courts aim to complete the fast-tracked cases within a year, James McHenry III, director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, wrote in a November memo.
From September to June, the Department of Homeland Security tracked 56,000 cases it wants heard more quickly, according to data from the office, which runs immigration courts. Most cases are pending, but about one in five of those immigrants failed to show up for a hearing and was ordered deported, the data shows.
That was more common in some places. Only 4 percent of immigrants on the so-called family unit docket in San Francisco didn’t show up for court and got deportation orders, compared with a third of immigrants on that docket in Atlanta, the data shows.
The families’ cases are moving much quicker than usual through immigration courts, which have nearly 950,000 cases that have been pending for an average of two years, according to data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.
Immigrant advocates have long complained the backlog prevents
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — A Florida detention camp that has housed thousands of unauthorized migrant children is emptying out, federal officials said Saturday.
Health and Human Services Department spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said in an email all children who had been at the facility are now either with family members or at smaller statelicensed centers. The camp has housed about 14,300 undocumented children in total since March 2018, the largest such facility in the country.
The Homestead facility, which will remain capable of housing migrant children, has been a frequent subject of protests.
Stauffer said in the email the number of beds at the Homestead center would be reduced from 2,700 beds to 1,200 beds in case they are needed. She added that no children have been placed there since July 3, but that might change in a few months.
Associated Press
asylum seekers from starting their lives in the U.S. and bringing family to join them.
It wasn’t immediately clear how the immigration courts could hear the fast-tracked cases so quickly. But the U.S. has hired more immigration judges in recent years to try to reduce the backlog.
Asylum seekers who appeal wind up staying much longer while their cases are reviewed. But the timeline means little to those seeking protection in the U.S., said Joshua Greer, an immigration attorney in Los Angeles.
“They’re not looking at how long was it between the first hearing and the pleadings and the individual hearing,” Greer said. “Their question is detained, or not detained, and sent back or not sent back — and that’s it.”