Trump moves to end illegal immigrant family separation by changing detention rules
The Trump administration on Wednesday unveiled new rules that would allow officials to detain migrant families together, indefinitely while judges consider whether to grant them asylum in the United States. This would end family separation and the risk of families/individuals being released into the general population without any tracking or true integration.
The rules, which are certain to draw a legal challenge, would replace a 1997 legal agreement that limits the amount of time US immigration authorities can detain migrant children. That agreement is generally interpreted as meaning families must be released within 20 days.
Trump administration officials blame the “Flores Settlement Agreement” for a spike in immigration, especially of Central American families, saying it encourages migrants to bring children with them so they can be released into the United S while their court cases are still pending — at the 20 day mark.
Families typically have to wait several months for their cases to work their way through immigration court, and the new rule would allow DHS to keep those families at detention facilities.
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, announcing the new rule, said those releases were an incentive for immigrants to travel with children and that the government believes the new detention rule will have a deterrent effect.
McAleenan said the government believes some families apprehended on the border were “fraudulent” based on DNA testing of some migrants in pilot programs implemented in recent months.
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The move by the administration immediately generated fresh outrage, following reports of dire conditions in detention facilities, and it is questionable whether courts will let the administration move forward with the policy.
Holly Cooper, co-director of the immigration law clinic at University of California, Davis and a lawyer in the Flores case, said attorneys haven’t seen the final rule and will have a week to brief a federal judge, who will weigh whether they are consistent with the settlement.
“The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
Peter Schey, a lawyer for the immigrant children in the Flores case and president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said if the regulations don’t match the settlement in that case, “they would be in immediate material breach, if not contempt of court.”
“I think all these things are now part of the 2020 campaign,” Schey said.
“The government should not be jailing kids, and certainly shouldn’t be seeking to put more kids in jail for longer,” Madhuri Grewal, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement.
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