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Yes, Children Are Being Taken From Parents at US Border
There has been some confusion recently regarding TWO SEPARATE immigration issues related to children arriving at our border seeking asylum. The one about "missing" children is alarming but actually not as bad as it sounds.
....this is a population of minors who arrived at the US border unaccompanied by parents or adults, were then detained by immigration authorities, and then were largely released into the care of parents and other close relatives. The government recently tried to reach about 7,600 of these children with a single phone call each. In 1,475 cases, those phone calls went unanswered — the so-called “missing.”
This #WhereAreTheChildren siren is causing confusion and overshadowing the MAJOR ISSUE on our hands.
The real crisis is the Trump administration’s new policy of separating undocumented families apprehended at the US border — a policy that may have gotten conflated with the “missing” children story that went viral this weekend.
Both stories raised concerns about the same issue: how the United States treats children who enter the country without legal status. But advocates worry significantly more about the new policy of separation than the so-called “missing” children. They fear that this policy — which has already led to more than 600 children being separated from their parents — will create traumatic situations for families and overwhelm the very immigration infrastructure put in place to protect these minors.
Here's what you must know and must share with others:
The Trump administration announced on May 7 that it would begin separating all families apprehended at the border, trying to cross into the United States without documentation.
An increasing share of border crossers seeking asylum come as “family units”: one or more adults with one or more children. And it’s much harder for the government to detain whole immigrant families than it is for them to detain adults.
....courts ruled that [families] couldn’t be kept in detention for more than 20 days. The Trump administration’s solution, now codified in policy, is to stop treating them as families: to detain the parents as adults and place the children in the custody of Health and Human Services as “unaccompanied minors.”
Between May 6 and May 19, 638 adults were referred for prosecution. Those adults brought with them a total of 658 children, all of whom were separated from the adults they traveled with.
This is a Trump policy despite his twitter denials blaming Democrats. His own people recently unveiled it.
Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen ordered federal prosecution against any individual caught crossing the border illegally. As a result, those adults traveling with children are now being separated once detained because children cannot be held in adult jails.
Nielsen recently defended the move. "In the United States that if you break the law, you go to jail and you're separated from your family. It shouldn't be any different for illegal immigrants," she said.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions has described this as a “zero tolerance” policy. “If you cross the border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple,” he said in a statement earlier this month.
When pressed by NPR on whether this policy was “cruel and heartless,” White House Chief of Staff John Kelly told NPR, “The children will be taken care of — put into foster care or whatever.”
The New York Times reports that as many as 700 children were taken from their parents BEFORE the policy was officially announced last month.
....these individuals have not been convicted of crimes. Many are arriving in the United States planning to seek asylum from horrific violence in Central America, particularly Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The United Nations estimates that the number of refugees seeking asylum from these places has increased sixteenfold since 2011.
"This is the most horrific practice I have seen in the 25-plus years," said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has sued the Trump administration. "That kind of separation lasts potentially a lifetime where the child no longer feels like the parent can protect them," Gelernt said.
Sources:
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/30/17405992/family-separations-missing-migrant-children