TRUMP ENDS BORDER POLICY
President reverses course after public outrage and political pressure, says he will stop migrant family separations at border
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course Wednesday, signing an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after a public uproar over the impact of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
The plan would keep families together in federal custody while awaiting prosecution for illegal border crossings, potentially violating a 1997 court settlement limiting the duration of child detentions.
“So we’re going to have strong, very strong borders, but we’re going to keep the families together,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”
Trump had repeatedly defended his immigration crackdown, including forcibly separating migrant children from their parents after they crossed the border. But images of young children in tears, housed in metal cages, set off an international outcry.
California leaders argued that the president’s order traded one dehuman-
“This Executive Order doesn’t fix the crisis. Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe.” — Sen. Kamala Harris
izing system for another, while doing nothing to reunite the thousands of kids who’ve been separated with their parents.
“This Executive Order doesn’t fix the crisis,” tweeted Sen. Kamala Harris. “Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Santa Clara, called the move “a very small nod towards decency” but argued that locking kids up with their parents “is not a solution.”
For days, Trump and his top administration officials were unwilling to unilaterally reverse the separation policy, insisting that congressional action was required.
“Congress and the courts created this problem, and Congress alone can fix it,” Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Monday. “Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States.”
The inaction sparked international outrage, including criticism from Pope Francis and opposition from world leaders.
“Family detention is not the answer at all,” said Manoj Govindaiah, director of Family Detention Services at RAICES, the Texas nonprofit legal defense fund that was the recipient of more than $13.7 million in donations by Wednesday afternoon from a Facebook Fundraiser campaign launched last weekend by
a Silicon Valley couple outraged at the Trump policy separating families. “Children should never be incarcerated. While this executive order might address the families, it’s not a workable or viable solution to the Administration’s treatment of children.”
Trump’s action came shortly after House Republican leaders vowed to bring broader immigration legislation up for votes today to address the crisis, despite widespread skepticism that a bill could pass.
“We will be going through Congress. We’re working on a much more comprehensive bill,” said Trump, who was flanked by Vice President Mike Pence and Nielsen. “What we have done today is we are keeping families together.”
House Republican leaders and more than two dozen lawmakers traveled to the White House on Wednesday afternoon in hopes of rallying support for broader immigration legislation that appeared short of the votes needed.
Separately, Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with Senate Republicans privately amid GOP fears about the political fallout from the separation policy. Upon leaving that meeting, Sessions said he had been “working with the White House and others all morning” on the family separation issue.
Trump’s said the order does not alter the “zero tolerance” policy itself that the administration put in place in April. Under that policy, the administration
has sought to prosecute as many border-crossing offenses as possible, including those involving families with children.
Because the Justice Department can’t prosecute children along with their parents, the result of the zero tolerance policy has been a sharp rise in the number of children detained separately.
On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security said 2,342 children have been separated from their parents since last month.
Trump’s executive order instructs DHS to keep families in custody “to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations,” language that points to the government’s deficit of detention space for parents with children.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operates two large family detention centers in Texas and a smaller facility in Pennsylvania, with a combined capacity for about 3,000 beds.
As of June 9, the three facilities had nearly 2,600 of those beds occupied, according to the latest available ICE figures.
The agency’s network of immigration jails for single adults is much larger, because ICE leases detention facilities and vacant cells from states and counties across the country. But placing children in those facilities would run afoul of the 1997 “Flores Settlement” agreement that limits the government’s ability to keep children in detention and orders them to be placed in least-restrictive setting possible.
A subsequent ruling in 2016 bars the government from keeping children in family detention centers for more than 20 days.
ICE is already stretched to capacity with adult detainees. The agency has had an average daily population of 41,280 detainees during the government’s 2018 fiscal year, according to the latest figures, a number that exceeds what Congress has authorized DHS to spend.