Sessions announces new approach on immigration.
WASHINGTON — All immigrants who cross the border illegally will be charged with a crime under a new “zero-tolerance” border enforcement policy, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday in a crackdown that could overwhelm already-clogged detention facilities and immigration courts with hundreds of thousands of new cases.
Sessions also said that families who illegally cross the border may be separated after their arrest, with children sent to juvenile shelters while their parents are sent to adult detention facilities. Until now, border agents tried to keep parents and their children to the same detention site.
The draconian new policy is expected to send a flood of deportation cases — and legal challenges — into federal courts. It also could put thousands more immigrants in detention facilities and children in shelters, and is likely to strain an immigration system that has struggled to keep up with a surge in enforcement under President Trump.
“If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” Sessions told a law enforcement conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., before heading to San Diego where he held a briefing on the issue. “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,” Sessions said.
Families seeking asylum and presenting themselves at official U.S. border crossings will be allowed to stay together as they seek protected status, according to a U.S. official familiar with the new policy.
But people caught crossing illegally will be charged with a crime and their children sent to refugee shelters, even as agents interview them to evaluate their asylum claims, as required by law.
Immigration activists denounced the new policy to separate parents from children, and said they expect to see it challenged in court. Past court decisions have put severe restrictions on the government’s ability to detain children for immigration violations.
“It’s clear this administration wants to use families who are fleeing violence as a pawn in a larger strategy to end immigration to the U.S.,” said Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, an advocacy group.
For now, the latest iteration in immigration processing will dramatically impact Border Patrol operations and potentially require major new funding from Congress.
Individuals who cross illegally will no longer be apprehended and simply bused back over the border without charges, as the Border Patrol has done in the past, especially for people without criminal records or prior immigration violations.
Under the new policy, everyone crossing illegally will be detained and prosecuted — a vast undertaking.
So far this fiscal year, Border Patrol officers have detained about 288,000 people. But only about 30,000 of those were charged with a crime for crossing the border, and only about 12,000 were charged with the more serious crime of re-entry, which is a felony. The rest were sent back across the border.