Celebrity attorney aiding migrants
Michael Avenatti, a California attorney known for representing porn actress Stormy Daniels in her legal battle with President Donald Trump, says he is also representing five children who are being held in Phoenix after being separated from their mothers by immigration officials.
Avenatti was in Phoenix Thursday to meet with the children, and he spoke with reporters shortly after visiting a 6-year-old boy from Honduras
who has been at a Southwest Key Programs facility near 27th and Campbell avenues for about 10 days.
Avenatti brought 6year-old Samir a letter from his mother, Levis, who was being held in a detention facility in Laredo, Texas. Mother and son were separated June 2 shortly after they crossed a river into the U.S. near Laredo, and they haven’t spoken since, Avenatti said.
“At first, as you might imagine, he was very shy and very standoffish,” Avenatti said.
“We kept telling him that we were there and had been sent by his mother but he didn’t believe us for a significant period of time. He just kept saying, ‘No, no, it’s not true, it’s not true.’ Even when we ... showed him the letter and we began to read it to him, he denied that it was from her, so clearly he’s been through a lot.”
After he finally convinced Samir the letter was, in fact, from his mother, Samir colored a picture of Disney princess Ariel and asked that Avenatti give it to his mom. Avenatti said that he would.
Avenatti said Samir was in good physical health and that the Southwest Key facility has counselors working with the children.
“The facility is wellmaintained; I thought the staff was very cooperative,” he said. “They’re doing their best to care for these children, but the fact remains that these children are better off with their parents and certainly should not be over a thousand miles
“There’s a lot of people in this nation that have witnessed a lot of things over the last few weeks, and even though they have been working at some of these facilities or maybe working within ICE, they’re not happy about what happened or what continues to happen.” Michael Avenatti Attorney
away in an unknown place.”
Laredo is more than 1,000 miles from Phoenix, or about a 16-hour drive.
“This young boy has never been to the United States before,” Avenatti said. “He doesn’t know what to think. He doesn’t know if he’s ever going to see his mother again.”
“It was sad. It was terrible. I mean, this is an excruciating process.”
Avenatti said it took a long time to track down Samir, but he did not elaborate on how he did it.
He said he was working with more than 60 families, including five children in Arizona, who he planned to visit throughout Thursday.
“There’s 128 children presently inside gates with the vast majority of them being separated from their parents,” he said, gesturing at the facility behind him. “It’s inexcusable that these children have been transported around the nation, shipped like cargo.
“This is a disgrace. It has no place in the world, let alone in the United States of America.”
He also said he is working with three whistleblowers, including two within U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“There’s a lot of people in this nation that have witnessed a lot of things over the last few weeks, and even though they have been working at some of these facilities or maybe working within ICE, they’re not happy about what happened or what continues to happen,” he said.
A crowdjustice campaign that bears Avenatti’s name is collecting pledges and asking the public to help the legal battle to end forced separation of children from their migrant parents.
Funds will be used to pay for release bonds to assist mothers who are attempting to gain release from detention centers and out-of-pocket expenses for Avenatti’s law firm’s work reuniting families and changing the policy, according to the campaign.
“All mothers are mothers first,” it reads. “Regardless of their political persuasion. And all children are simply children. Please help us right this wrong.”
His visit comes one day after President Trump signed an executive order that pledged to stop family separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border and asked Congress to find a long-term legislative solution.
Trump, facing pressure from Republicans, Democrats, religious groups and others, reversed his tune, but insisted the “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute all undocumented immigrants will continue.
Avenatti said he took issue with the executive order because it doesn’t have any directive on reunification efforts for those who have already been impacted.
“My reading of the policy is that it only applies on a go-forward basis,” he said. “There’s a number of problems with the policy. It’s also going to allow for permanent potential detention of these families; there’s no time frame relating to how long they can keep these families together.
“The most important problem with the policy, from my perspective, is that it doesn’t provide for any reunification effort whatsoever for the thousands of families and thousands of children that have already been impacted.”
Two immigration proposals were up for votes in the U.S. House of Representatives Thursday that would overhaul the immigration system. One is a hard-line proposal favored by conservatives, which would basically make the controversial family-separation policy a law. The other is a compromise bill put forward by House Speaker Paul Ryan that would seek to end the separations.
Over the past weeks, images and audio of crying children have caused public outrage and sparked protests across the country against the Trump administration’s practices.
A nationwide protest, scheduled for June 30 and backed with the hashtag #Families BelongTogether, is expected to occur in Washington and in sister cities across the country.