‘Zero tolerance’ crams courts, separates families
Children taken from arrested immigrants
McALLEN, Texas – The government’s new “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants and its tactic of separating families at the border has taxed the immigration system, from overflowing holding facilities to crammed courts.
This is especially evident in the eighth-floor courtroom of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Texas in this border town, the busiest in the nation for illegal crossings.
Wednesday morning, 72 shackled defendants shuffled into the courtroom, filling nearly all six rows of wooden pews. Handcuffs were removed during the hearing, but their ankles remained shackled together. They had all been charged with a federal misdemeanor for crossing into the USA without papers. Thirteen of them had been separated from their children, some as young as 6. A hearing of similar size was scheduled for later in the afternoon.
Before the policy was enacted in May, the court saw 20 to 30 immigrants a day charged with crimes, said Azalea Aleman-Bendiks, an assistant federal public defender with the court. Today, that number hovers around 150.
“The numbers are just staggering,” she said in an interview with USA TODAY. “I don’t know how much longer we’re going to be able to keep up with this flow.”
Last month, the Trump administration began stepping up criminal prosecutions of people crossing the border illegally, charging nearly everyone who crosses over without proper documentation with a federal misdemeanor. By doing so, under law, children entering the USA alongside adults fall under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, while those criminal cases are pursued.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the policy is intended to deter people from crossing illegally into the USA.
“We believe every person that enters the country illegally like that should be prosecuted,” Sessions told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Tuesday. “And you can’t be giving immunity to people who bring children with them recklessly and improperly and illegally.”
U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Texas, spent the past week along the border, meeting with church officials and immigrant advocates. He said he requested information from the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees immigration agencies, particularly on the status of the children.
“It’s a mess,” Vela said. “This is essentially an unaccompanied-minor crisis manufactured by the president of the United States.”
Officials have not released exact figures on how many children are held alone and how often they’re reunited with their parents. The Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for the minors, did not reply to several interview requests.
Since mid-May, Aleman-Bendiks said, there have been more than 430 children separated from their parents in the McAllen sector.
At Wednesday’s hearing, she asked each of the 13 defendants who had been separated from their children to stand. None of them had criminal records, and one had been deported.
Aleman-Bendiks said she had asked the ORR for lists of the children to help reunite the families but hadn’t received a reply. “This is a tragedy that is happening right before this court,” Aleman-Bendiks said.
Magistrate Judge Peter Ormsby said he sympathized with the families, but his court didn’t have jurisdiction to order the agencies to release information. “I trust and hope you will be reunited with your family members,” he told the defendants. “But I also hope you understand that the reason you were separated is that you violated the laws of the United States.”