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During Pandemic, ICE AGAIN Doing Family Separation
Trump is using a global pandemic to attack immigrants and reinstate family separation.
Federal immigration officials are trying to separate families in the midst of a pandemic, saying Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have told parents detained with their children at migrant family jails that they can either agree to have their children as young as one released without them—or remain jailed together indefinitely.
Lawyers said their immigrant clients were confused and disturbed by the form and felt that ICE officers were using it to intimidate them into giving up their children.... the form presented to parents last week was identical to a policy previously floated by the Trump administration known as "binary choice," which would have allowed parents to separate from their children if they did not want to bring them into detention indefinitely.
ICE would more easily be able to deport adults separated from their children and that the parents feared they would not be reunited with their children if they were separated.
We should be releasing migrant families together, especially as COVID-19 spreads in detention centers, not tormenting them like this.
Immigrant rights groups sued the Trump administration for keeping families in ICE detention as the COVID-19 crisis continues to spread and claim lives in the United States. One death has been reported in ICE adult detention...
The courts have already urged the Trump administration to safely release children and families jailed at these facilities amid the pandemic, which ICE has every power to do right now. Instead, its seeking to prolong their detention by any means possible—and in conditions that are becoming increasingly dangerous, as the number of ICE detainees who have tested positive for COVID-19 continues to climb.
Many of the families have been in detention since last fall waiting for the results of federal lawsuits that challenge the Trump administration's policies and procedures on asylum....
Disgusting.
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