Tag: Trump immigration policy

Federal judge says Trump must fully restore DACA

The following article by Aris Folley was posted on the Hill website August 3, 2018:

Credit: Gili Getz / Movimiento Cosecha

A federal judge ruled Friday that the Trump administration must fully restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In his 25-page opinion, Judge John Bates said the Trump White House had again failed to provide justification for its proposal to end the Obama-era program, under which nearly 800,000 people brought to the country illegally as children, known as “Dreamers,” have received work permits and deferral from deportation.

The judge also said in his opinion that he has agreed to delay his ruling to give the Trump administration 20 days “to determine whether it intends to appeal the Court’s decision and, if so, to seek a stay pending appeal.”

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Trump administration says it isn’t responsible for reuniting deported parents and children

The following article by Rebekah Entralgo was posted on the ThinkProgress website August 3, 2018:

The ACLU calls the administration’s refusal to reunite deported parents and children “remarkable.”

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen Credit: Kevin Hagen, Getty Images

The Trump administration continues to wash their hands of any responsibility of solving a crisis of their own creation.

On Thursday night, the Department of Justice (DOJ) informed a federal judge that the government is not responsible for finding the over 400 parents separated from their children at the border who were deported and are no longer in the United States.

Instead, the government believes it is the responsibility of the American Civil Liberties Unions (ACLU), the organization suing the federal government, to reunify deported parents with their children.

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THE LATEST: Hundreds Of Families Remain Separated, Trump Goes After

Hundreds of children remain separated from their parents as a result of Trump’s cruel policy. Instead of doing more to reunite these families, the Trump administration wants to continue to push their anti-immigrant agenda. Now, he’s going after legal immigrants. Here’s the latest:

Hundreds of children remain separated from their families, many of whose parents have already been deported.

MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff: “Lots of other stuff going on today. Figured I’d remind everyone the Trump administration separated 2,551 migrant kids from their parents at the border. 572 of them are *still* separated. 410 have parents who were already deported. The government simply can’t find them.” Continue reading “THE LATEST: Hundreds Of Families Remain Separated, Trump Goes After”

Worker at US child immigration facility arrested for molestation

The following article by the Telegraph reporters was posted on their website August 2, 2018:

Fernando Magaz Negrete after his arrest on suspicion of molestation Credit: Maricopa Co. Sheriff’s Office

A worker at a nonprofit organisation in the US that houses immigrant children separated from their parents at the border has been arrested on suspicion of molesting a 14-year-old girl at its one of its facilities in Phoenix, police said Wednesday.

Southwest Key, which operates the facility, declined to say whether the 14-year-old girl was an immigrant who was separated from her parents.

Fernando Magaz Negrete kissed and groped the girl in her bedroom at the facility on June 27 in an encounter witnessed by the girl’s 16-year-old roommate, police said.

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Trump to Dems: I’ll ‘Shut Down’ Government Over Immigration

The following article by John T. Bennett was posted on the Roll Call website July 29, 2018:

Shelby has told president new wall funding likely capped at $1.6B

Credit: Kevin Dietsch-Pool, Getty Images

President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to shut down the federal government this fall unless Democrats give in to his border security demands, including by giving him billions more for his proposed southern border wall.

Should Democrats continue denying Trump his border barrier and other demands and the president make good on his high-stakes threat, it would be the third funding lapse of his tenure. It also would shutter the government just weeks before voters will decide which party controls the House and Senate — and the Trump-GOP agenda — come January.

“I would be willing to “shut down” government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall!” he wrote.

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‘Deleted’ families: What went wrong with Trump’s family-separation effort

The following article by Nick Miroff, Amy Goldstein and Maria Sacchetti was posted on the Washington Post website July 28, 2018:

Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody after the Trump administration scrambled to reunite separated families under a court-imposed deadline. (Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)

When a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunify migrant families separated at the border, the government’s cleanup crews faced an immediate problem.

They weren’t sure who the families were, let alone what to call them.

Customs and Border Protection databases had categories for “family units,” and “unaccompanied alien children” who arrive without parents. They did not have a distinct classification for more than 2,600 children who had been taken from their families and placed in government shelters.

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GOP-led House committee rebuffs Trump administration on immigrant asylum claim policy

The following article by Seung Min Kim was posted on the Washington Post website July 26, 2018:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Credit: Alex Brandon, AP

A GOP-led House committee delivered a rebuke of the Trump administration’s immigration policies this week — an unusual bipartisan move that may ultimately spell trouble for must-pass spending measures later this year.

The powerful House Appropriations Committee passed a measure that would essentially reverse Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s guidance earlier this year that immigrants will not generally be allowed to use claims of domestic or gang violence to qualify for asylum. The provision was adopted as part of a larger spending bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, an already contentious measure because of disputes over funding for President Trump’s border wall.

But one influential Senate Republican and ally of the White House warned that keeping the asylum provision could sink the must-pass funding bill, and other conservatives who support a tougher line on immigration began denouncing it Thursday.

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Hundreds of migrant children remain in custody, though most separated families are reunited at court deadline

The following article by Nick Miroff and Samantha Schmidt was posted on the Washington Post website July 26, 2018:

For some seeking asylum, family separations were worth the risk: ‘Whatever it took, we had to get to this country’ (Zoeann Murphy, Jorge Ribas/The Washington Post)

At the expiration of a court deadline to reunite migrant families separated during its “zero tolerance” border crackdown, the Trump administration said Thursday that it has delivered 1,442 children to parents detained in immigration custody, and is on track to return all of those deemed eligible for reunification.

But 711 children remain in government shelters because their parents have criminal records, their cases remain under review or the parents are no longer in the United States, officials said. They added that 431 parents of those children have been deported.

Chris Meekins, an official at the Department of Health and Human Services, which has led the reunification effort, told reporters that “hundreds of staff have worked 24/7” to meet the court’s 30-day deadline. Administration officials said they would work with the court to figure out how to return the remaining children, including those whose parents have been deported.

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Hundreds of migrant children still separated from parents as deadline nears

The following article by Lydia Wheeler and Nathaniel Weixel was posted on the Hill website July 26, 2018:

© Getty Images

The Trump administration has just hours before its court-ordered deadline to reunite families it separated at the southern border, but a new court filing Thursday night shows there are still hundreds of parents who have not been reunited with their kids.

The government reported that is has reunited 1,442 children ages 5 and older with their parents who were in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody and 378 have been “discharged in other appropriate circumstances,” including to a sponsor or to their parents in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody.

But there are another 711 children in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement whose parents are either not eligible for reunification or unavailable.

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Tracking family separation at the border: 431 parents deported without kids

The following article by Rebekah Entralgo and Amanda Michelle Gomez was posted on the ThinkProgress.org website July 23, 2018:

The Trump administration claims it’s on track to reunite all “eligible” families they separated.

Ever since the Trump administration began splitting up families at the border, there has been a lack of transparency when it comes to the number of children separated from their parents.

ThinkProgress has launched a project to hold the federal government accountable and track the number of children reunited with their families, as well as those who remain separated.

This post will be updated as new information becomes available.

View the complete post here.