Attention still focused on family separations
El Paso protesters decry kids’ detentions
EL PASO — More than 1,000 people marched on an immigrant processing center here Tuesday to demand an end to family separations, part of the growing wave of protests that have roiled the country and sent lawmakers in a frantic search for a solution to overturn the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” approach to illegal border crossers.
Protesters here sought the immediate release of children and access to a “tent city” erected last week at the U.S. port of entry in the nearby border community of Tornillo that is housing about 200 immigrant teenage boys.
The shelter has 360 beds and could expand to hold more children in the future, said state Rep. Mary González, a Democrat from Clint.
“Our message is, free our children now,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, which organized the rally.
His words drew cheers and chants from the crowd.
The group, along with elected officials, faith leaders and others, also expressed their disapproval of the separations
in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
“We cannot bear seeing parents, arrived at the country to seek asylum, torn from their children in a heartless attempt to enforce ‘deterrence,’ ” the letter said. “This is nothing more than inflicting trauma on children and parents at a massive and grotesque scale. We do not accept the subsequent mass incarceration of immigrant children, which follows from those separations, as a policy of our country.”
Federal authorities have removed more than 2,400 immigrant children from their parents and placed them in some 100 shelters around the country since Sessions announced the crackdown last month on illegal entry into the U.S. The children, including infants, are kept temporarily in shelters or placed with foster families while their parents are detained to faced criminal charges.
Some children have been reunited with parents who have been allowed to seek asylum, a process that can take years to complete.
The new policy to separate families reversed the more common practice of keeping immigrant families together in detention as they launched their asylum cases. In 2014, a surge to the border of Central American immigrants escaping violence in their countries prompted the government to open large family detention centers south of San Antonio. The South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley, about 70 miles from San Antonio, is the largest of its kind in the country, with a capacity of 2,400 women and children. A second center, the Karnes County Residential Center, was converted four years ago to hold up to 1,158 migrant women and their children.
Despite the long-term use of the immigrant detention centers, the administration has argued it has no legal authority to keep migrant families together in detention and continues to cast blame on Democrats for the current border crisis.
Struggling to find an exit strategy amid the growing outrage of the family separations from across the political spectrum, from religious leaders and even the current and former first ladies, Senate Republicans vowed Tuesday to support legislation that would provide legal authority to detain parents and children together while their asylum claims are heard in the courts.
The bill also would provide funding for more immigration judges to expedite asylum claims of families.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York rejected the GOP offer. He said President Donald Trump could immediately use his executive authority to end the family separations.
In Texas, meanwhile, state Rep. César Blanco of El Paso, the chairman of the House Border Caucus, asked Gov. Greg Abbott to end border security operations by the state and cancel the recent deployment of state National Guard troops to the border while the family separation policy is in place.
The El Paso demonstration Tuesday came two days after Texas political leaders led a Father’s Day protest outside the Tornillo facility.
The rally included local residents and protesters who had traveled here from outside the state. They gathered at Edgemere Linear Park with signs that read, “No more families torn apart” and, “Stop hurting children.” The out-ofstate participants included a contingent from New Mexico and a congressional candidate from New York.
For protester Elva O’Hara, 55, of El Paso, seeing children detained struck her in a personal way. O’Hara said she and her three siblings were placed in a juvenile detention facility in California when she was 8, after their father killed their mother in front of them. Because of that experience, she said,she could identify with what the detained children were going through.
“The situation that these children are in now is extremely traumatizing and terrifying. They don’t know where they are or what’s going to happen to them,” O’Hara said. “And all they want is their mom or their dad. Nothing else.”
After marching a mile to the El Paso Processing Center, which also has a training and recruitment office for the Border Patrol, protesters gathered in front of its gates, holding up posters that spelled out “CLOSED” in large red letters. They led chants of “shame” and “children need their families.”
A series of speakers criticized the family separations while Border Patrol officers on a nearby rooftop monitored the crowd and appeared to film and photograph the protest.
Amber Ramirez, 25, a former immigration paralegal, said she wanted to help the families be reunited and influence change to the country’s immigration policies.
“They’re not coming here for any other reason than to save their lives,” she said.