Politico:
By Josh Gerstein
January 6, 2016
A
Justice Department appeals panel has halted the deportation of four
immigrant families detained in a sweep the Obama administration launched
over the weekend aimed at
returning families who crossed the southern U.S. border during a recent
surge of illegal migration from Central America, attorneys involved
said Wednesday.
The
Board of Immigration Appeals granted stays of deportation Tuesday to
four families detained over the weekend as part of the controversial
operation, according to the
CARA Family Detention Project, a joint effort of several immigrant
rights groups.
A
spokeswoman for the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is part of the
Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, said she
could not confirm the stays
without more details on the individuals involved. Homeland Security
Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement Monday that none of the 121
individuals detained in the first round of arrests had appeals pending
in the immigration courts or the federal court
system.
One
attorney handling the cases, Melissa Crow of the American Immigration
Council, said 12 people were covered by the stays issued Tuesday. Their
asylum claims had been
denied by DHS officials and they had not filed appeals until Tuesday.
“For
the most part, they didn’t understand that they had appeal rights and
many of them didn’t understand what went on at their initial hearings,”
Crow said in an interview.
“Once we learned more about their cases ... we filed stay requests and
appeals because we believe they had legitimate claims for protection.”
Immigrant
rights groups, Democratic presidential candidates and some members of
Congress have criticized the sweeps. Some advocates have gone so far as
to compare President
Barack Obama to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has
railed against illegal immigration.
“Our
interviews revealed that these families have bona fide asylum claims,
but were deprived of a meaningful opportunity to present them at their
hearings in immigration
court,” CARA’s Katie Shepherd added in a statement. “It’s beyond
shameful that these families, who risked everything to seek protection
in the United States, were being forcibly returned to the violence and
turmoil they fled in Central America.”
Two
of the groups involved in obtaining the stays, the American Immigration
Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Forum, wrote to
Johnson Wednesday asking for
an immediate meeting to discuss the administration's strategy and
tactics the organizations have blasted as inhumane.
It’s
unclear whether any of the families picked up over the weekend, who
hail from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, have actually been
deported. Some or all of them
appear to have been taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement
detention centers to await expulsion from the U.S. Crow said she
believes some of the families being held in Dilley, Texas, were set for
deportation Wednesday.
It
is also uncertain how long the stays will last and whether they have
the potential to stymie the effort to deport families viewed by the
Obama administration as an
enforcement priority because they crossed the border in recent years.
Officials have pointed to a recent spike in migration from the Central
American countries and expressed concern that, without some
deportations, more immigrant families and unaccompanied
children will be encouraged to make the dangerous trek.
Asked
whether any litigation could be brought to try to halt the deportation
efforts more broadly, rather than or in addition to litigating
individual cases, Crow said,
“We are exploring a lot of possible avenues at the moment.”
The
Board of Immigration Appeals is part of a quasijudicial system within
the executive branch that handles immigration matters. It receives
appeals from decisions of
immigration judges and some DHS officials. Usually, a single member of
the BIA acts on behalf of the board.
In
a related development, Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) released an email
Wednesday showing the Department of Health and Human Services has
activated facilities in Florida
and Colorado to hold unaccompanied minors who cross the border and is
considering setting up facilities at six military bases. The bases set
to be visited this week are Gunter Annex at Maxwell Air Force Base,
Alabama; Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida; Grand
Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; Naval Support Activity
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts; and
Travis Air Force Base, California.
The
email Roby released said no final decision has been made about which,
if any, of the six bases would be used to house child migrants.
“A
military base is no place to house illegal immigrant children. Bases
like Maxwell are engaged in real military activities training,
education, cyber warfare — many
times in classified settings that are very sensitive. Their mission
does not need to be distracted by housing, feeding and securing hundreds
of detainees,” Roby said in a statement. “Housing illegal immigrant
children at an active military base like Maxwell-Gunter
is a terrible idea. We shut it down the first time and we are working
every angle to shut it down again.”
An
HHS spokeswoman confirmed Wednesday that her agency is looking at
military sites for temporary use to house unaccompanied children taken
into custody crossing the border.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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