- 18 Jun 2018 00:15
#14925504
2,000 Children Separated From Parents in Six weeks Under Trump Policy
First of all, this is really all the Democrats have left in order to paint the president as Hitler and to motivate their base to vote. Second, it's not "Trump policy." Apparently, it was a government policy agreed upon by both Republicans and Democrats in 1985.
Almost 2,000 children have been separated from their families at the US southern border over a six-week period during a crackdown on illegal entries, according to Department of Homeland Security figures obtained on Friday by the Associated Press.
The figures show that 1,995 minors were separated from 1,940 adults between 19 April and 31 May 2018. The separations were not broken down by age, and included separations for illegal entry, immigration violations or possible criminal conduct by the adult.
Under a “zero tolerance” policy announced by the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, Department of Homeland Security officials are now referring all cases of illegal entry for criminal prosecution. US protocol prohibits detaining children with their parents because the children are not charged with a crime, while the parents are.
Sessions announced the effort on 6 April, and homeland security began stepping up referrals in early May, effectively putting the policy into action.
Since then, stories of weeping children torn from the arms of their frightened parents have emerged and the policy has been widely criticised by church groups, politicians on both sides of the aisle and children’s advocates. A fresh battle in Congress is brewing, in part over this issue.
Some immigrant advocates have said women were being separated from their infants – a charge homeland security and justice department officials flatly denied. They also said the children were being well cared for and disputed reports of disorder and mistreatment at the border.
The new figures are for people who tried to enter the US between official border crossings. Asylum seekers who go directly to official crossings are not typically separated from their families.
A small number of reporters were given strictly controlled access earlier this week to one immigration detention centre where some children forcibly separated from their parents, or crossing the border alone, are being held. A quotation from former president Barack Obama is written on a wall in the Casa Padre centre in Brownsville, Texas. In English and Spanish, it states: “We are and always will be a nation of immigrants.”
Many of the 1,500 children in the facility, a former Walmart, might more readily agree with a part of Obama’s 2014 speech that is not on the wall: “Our immigration system is broken – and everybody knows it.”
A series of protest rallies organised by a group called Families Belong Together took place across the US on Thursday. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement on Wednesday criticizing the government’s immigration policies. “Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral,” he said.
First of all, this is really all the Democrats have left in order to paint the president as Hitler and to motivate their base to vote. Second, it's not "Trump policy." Apparently, it was a government policy agreed upon by both Republicans and Democrats in 1985.
The Original Flores Settlement
In 1985, two organizations filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of immigrant children who had been detained by the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) challenging procedures regarding the detention, treatment, and release of children. After many years of litigation, including an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, the parties reached a settlement in 1997.
The Flores Settlement Agreement (Flores) imposed several obligations on the immigration authorities, which fall into three broad categories:
1. The government is required to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to, in order of preference, parents, other adult relatives, or licensed programs willing to accept custody.
2. If a suitable placement is not immediately available, the government is obligated to place children in the “least restrictive” setting appropriate to their age and any special needs.
3.The government must implement standards relating to the care and treatment of children in immigration detention.
According to advocates, as well as the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, the INS did not immediately comply with the terms of the Agreement. It was only after the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) assumed responsibility for the care and custody of unaccompanied children in 2003—a product of years of advocacy on the part of human rights organizations, religious groups, and political leaders—that noticeable changes were implemented.
ORR, like the former INS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has failed to issue regulations implementing the terms of the settlement, as required by the parties’ 2001 stipulation extending the agreement.
Original Source