DOJ fights family detention ruling

Politico

By Seung Min Kim

August 7, 2015

DOJ fights family detention ruling 

The Obama administration is asking a federal judge to reconsider her ruling that called for the release of tens of thousands of immigrant mothers and children who tried to cross the southern border illegally.

In a 60-page response filed late Thursday, Justice Department lawyers argued that family detention facilities run by the Department of Homeland Security are a necessary tool to help deter illegal migration to the United States.

The court order — issued by Judge Dolly Gee of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California — could mean that immigrant families could not be held in detention facilities beyond five days, DOJ attorneys said. That would “functionally terminate” the ability of federal immigration officials to place the immigrants into deportation proceedings, because that could not get done in such a short time frame, according to DOJ.

“The proposed order would greatly impact DHS’s operational capacity and its ability to secure the borders while facilitating lawful trade and travel,” Obama administration lawyers wrote in the filing.

It also warned that the court decision “could cause another notable increase in the numbers of parents choosing to cross the border with their children.”

Last month, Gee found that the practice of detaining immigrant mothers and families violated a court settlement from 1997 involving children in the United States illegally, which requires that they be held in the “least restrictive” conditions possible.

The ruling revived calls from Democrats and immigration advocates to shutter detention facilities designed to hold mothers and children.

Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has criticized the practice, as has former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, a long-shot Clinton opponent who tweeted Friday: “The US is a welcoming, compassionate country yet we insist on jailing vulnerable women and children. Why didn’t @DHSgov #EndFamilyDetention?”

And the Obama administration’s policies on detaining immigrant families caught at the border have run into steep opposition from Democrats on Capitol Hill. Nearly all members of the House Democratic Caucus signed onto a letter circulated last week by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a former immigration attorney who is the ranking member on a House subcommittee overseeing the policy.

“It is long past time to end family detention,” the House Democrats wrote in the letter. “In light of this recent federal court ruling, we urge you take all necessary and appropriate steps to bring the Department’s practices in line with the settlement agreement and the recent court ruling.”

Senate Democrats have sent similar missives to Johnson.

Immigrant-rights groups on Friday were immediately outraged by the Justice Department’s response, with the American Immigration Lawyers Association saying the administration should be “embarrassed” by its response to the court order.

“Ever since Judge Gee first threatened her order, the administration has been scrambling to quickly release some of the mothers and children, and they’ve bungled the process badly, leaving in detention many women and children who have been locked up way too long,” the group’s president, Victor Nieblas Pradis, said. “The government’s protest that ‘we’ve fixed things, we promise’ rings hollow when the sharp light of reality shines on the detention centers.

Homeland Security officials have revised their detention policies in response to the pressure from Democrats and immigration advocates. Still, they have defended the practice as a way to deter more migrants, particularly from Central America, from entering the United States illegally.

More than 68,440 immigrant family members — generally children with their mothers — were apprehended at the southern border in between October 2013 and September 2014, according to government statistics. In comparison, about 24,900 have been apprehended at the border from last October to this June.

Despite that steep drop, the number of immigrants being caught at the southern border is “still substantially higher than has been the case for many years,” the Justice Department said.

Also, a surge of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the border prompted a congressional battle last summer over additional funding to deal with the crisis. But a divided Congress never passed a supplemental funding bill, and the Obama administration took steps on its own to try and stem the influx.

Two of the largest centers that are detaining immigrant mothers and children are located in Texas — in Dilley and in Karnes County. The Dilley facility holds 2,400 people and is currently housing 1,182 immigrants, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

The Karnes County center can hold up to 532 people and is currently holding 193, the spokeswoman said. A smaller facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania currently is holding 76 immigrants. Before the two larger facilities opened, immigrant families had been held at other detention centers — such as a temporary one located in Artesia, New Mexico, which was shut down last fall.

Republicans have pushed the Obama administration to keep their family detention practices intact. In a letter to Johnson last week, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte of Virginia argued that detaining immigrant mothers and children who cross the border illegally was an effective way to ensure they show up for their immigration court hearings.

Statistics from the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review show that 84 percent of undocumented immigrants with children who have not been detained skip their court hearings. For migrant children without a parent, it’s 46 percent who don’t appear for their hearings.

“I understand that to fight this case may be an arduous undertaking in the face of well-funded and very motivated advocacy groups that decry any immigration enforcement,” Goodlatte, himself a former immigration lawyer, wrote to Johnson. “But your duty is to the American people to prevent and deter unlawful border entries.”

For more information, go to:  www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com