Los Angeles Times
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Brian Bennett, and Cindy Carcamo
June 20, 2014
Facing
pressure to address a widening crisis on the Southwest border, the
Obama administration announced new measures Friday to detain, process
and ultimately deport the
growing numbers of Central American children and families who already
are overwhelming most existing federal detention facilities.
The
Department of Homeland Security said it was rushing additional lawyers,
asylum officers and immigration judges to the Texas border, where most
of the new immigrants
are arriving, to process cases more quickly and reduce the large
numbers of those who must be released with promises to appear at later
court hearings.
“We
are surging resources to increase our capacity to detain individuals
and adults with children, and to handle immigration court hearings,”
Deputy Homeland Security
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a Friday briefing.
So
far this fiscal year, more than 39,000 adults have been caught crossing
the Southwest border with children. An additional 52,000 unaccompanied
children had been detained
as of last week, and by year's end officials expect that number to have
increased to as many as 90,000.
With
shelters and detention centers already overcrowded, many new immigrants
have been released to sponsors and family members with orders to appear
for hearings later,
prompting critics to say that many will elect to quietly remain within
the U.S. The Department of Justice reported that 33% of immigrants
released in such cases in fiscal year 2013 failed to appear for
subsequent hearings, up from 24% in 2009.
Texas
Gov. Rick Perry on Friday called for deploying an additional 1,000
National Guard troops on the Texas-Mexico border, along with Lakota
helicopters and Predator drones.
“The safety and security of our border communities is being threatened
by this flood of illegal immigration, and the crisis worsens by the
day,” the Republican said in a letter asking President Obama to travel
to Texas to address the issue.
Vice
President Joe Biden and other U.S. officials met Friday with Guatemalan
President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti in
Guatemala City in the second
prong of the administration's strategy, aimed at helping Central
American nations alleviate the poverty and crime believed to have helped
drive the exodus toward the United States. The plan calls for $40
million in U.S. aid to reduce youth involvement in gangs
and promote other security improvements.
Similar programs are aimed at El Salvador and Honduras, which also are seeing expanded migrant outflows.
The
number of Central American children caught crossing the border
illegally last year surpassed the number from Mexico — 21,000 from
Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras,
compared with about 17,000 from Mexico.
Under
U.S. law, unaccompanied Mexican children can be returned to their
homeland immediately, but children from other countries must first be
taken into U.S. custody.
By law, Customs and Border Protection can hold them for only 72 hours,
after which they must be transferred to the Department of Health and
Human Services, which finds beds for them in temporary shelters.
More
than 90% of the children are later placed with a relative or sponsor,
according to statistics provided by Kids in Need of Defense, a legal
advocacy group.
Mayorkas could not say Friday how many released detainees were showing up for subsequent immigration court proceedings.
By
law, those arriving now are interviewed to see whether they are
eligible for asylum. They can claim they have a “credible fear” of
returning home that immigration courts
must address before they can be deported, posing a challenge to U.S.
Customs and Border Protection and other agencies as the numbers
increase.
Mayorkas said the government would be sending more officers to hear these asylum claims and screen out those ineligible.
“Many
individuals from Central America are found to be ineligible for these
forms of protections and are, in fact, promptly removed,” he said.
But
according to a recent report by the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees, 58% of children arriving from Mexico and Central America
are probably eligible for
humanitarian protection under international conventions.
A
similar study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonpartisan,
nonprofit group, estimates that about 40% were eligible for some form of
immigration relief — such as
asylum, special immigrant juvenile status or visas for victims of crime
or trafficking.
As
security and gang truces deteriorate in Guatemala, Honduras or El
Salvador, those fleeing may argue that they are afraid to return because
they or their relatives were
threatened for not joining a gang, said Stephen Legomsky, a law
professor at Washington University in St. Louis.
“I
could easily imagine a significant number of these people showing
credible fear,” Legomsky said, which could lead to added delays since
federal immigration courts are
already backlogged.
“The administration is in a tough spot,” he said.
Though
immigrant rights advocates oppose expanding family detentions, some
also acknowledged Friday that the crisis had put the administration in a
bind.
“We
need to recognize that they have to take some action in either
expediting cases or finding some resolution in who's coming and why,”
said Michelle Brane, director
of detention and asylum at the Women'sÖ Refugee Commission.
Congress
in 2005 directed Homeland Security officials to keep immigrant families
together, either by releasing them or detaining them as a group in
humane settings.
Two
years later, the American Civil Liberties Union sued the department,
saying it was for illegally imprisoning families with children younger
than the age of 17 under
inhumane conditions at the T. Don Hutto family detention center in
Texas. The lawsuits were settled, and the center stopped housing
families.
The
government currently operates only one immigrant family detention
center, in Berks County, Pa. Brane praised the facility, but said it can
only house 96 people at
most, and only for weeks or months at a time.
Officials
plan to house more families at the Federal Law Enforcement Training
Center in Artesia, N.M. The facility, which is used for training federal
officers, is being
outfitted to hold up to 700 parents with children who are in removal
proceedings, officials said Friday.
Brane
said immigrant rights advocates were concerned that at the new
detention centers, immigrant families would not have adequate access to
attorneys. They also worry
that judges and government lawyers will be sent to hear families' cases
there instead of at courthouses, where immigrants, apart from their
children and guards, can speak more freely about sensitive subjects such
as domestic and sexual abuse.
But
she said the new facilities would be preferable to keeping immigrants
in overcrowded Border Patrol stations, where officials this week lead
reporters on a tour, displaying
children corralled behind high chain-link fences and sleeping on
concrete floors under grubby blankets.
“My
hope would be ... that they use it to get families out of Border
Patrol stations for processing people into alternatives to detention
programs where they can file
their claim and go through the process,” she said of the new detention
centers.
Advocates
have also asked the administration to expand cheaper, less restrictive
alternatives to detention, such as releasing immigrants and keeping tabs
on them by telephone
or electronic ankle monitors.
Mayorkas said alternative monitoring would be used, though it's not clear how extensively.
Administration
officials said the effort to halt the immigration tide would deal not
only with combating crime and poverty but also with working to halt
widespread rumors
among Central Americans that immigrants with families will be allowed
to remain in the U.S.
“We're
doing everything possible both to support countries in stemming the
tide of this migration, but also to deal with the misinformation that is
being deliberately
planted by criminal organizations, by smuggling networks, about what
people can expect if they come to the United States. That is
misinformation that is being promulgated and put forward in a very
deliberate way,” said Cecilia Muñoz, director of the White
House Domestic Policy Council.
The
financial pledges also include $9.6 million to help Central American
governments receive and integrate deported immigrants, $25 million in El
Salvador to create 77
outreach centers to prevent at-risk youths from joining gangs or
migrating to the U.S., and $18.5 million in Honduras to fight gangs and
support community policing.
But
Perez Molina took a view that seemed to undermine Biden's message. The
Guatemalan president said via his Twitter account that Biden had
promised a special program
of legal assistance to Guatemalan families in the U.S. who are reunited
with their children.
The
Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, didn't attend the meeting
because he is in Brazil for the World Cup, in which the Honduran
national soccer team is competing.
That drew a miffed rebuke from the U.S. ambassador.
Congressional officials greeted the new administration measures with a mix of skepticism and relief.
Rep.
Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) has been calling for some of the same measures,
and said he was pleased to see the administration moving to work with
Central American leaders
to deport families in a quick, humane way. Cuellar discussed the crisis
with Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson before Johnson traveled to
Texas on Friday with senior administration officials to visit Border
Patrol facilities and a new temporary shelter
for immigrant youths here at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland.
“I'm
encouraged that the White House is now getting engaged on this
humanitarian crisis,” Cuellar said. “They're starting to move in the
right direction.”
Sen.
Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) welcomed the administration taking a “hard
look at addressing the root causes of this crisis” but expressed concern
about opening new family
detention facilities. “To say that a child who is apprehended at the
border with their parent must remain locked up throughout their judicial
proceeding is simply a step too far,” he said.
Republicans,
who have criticized Obama in recent days for stoking the influx,
remained skeptical Friday that the administration would follow through
on promises to more
swiftly enforce immigration laws and curtail the flow of vulnerable
migrants.
“This
humanitarian crisis is one of the president's own making. After years
of ignoring the law and sending a very dangerous message to Central
American families, the
administration is finally taking small steps to address this enormous
problem,” Texas Republican and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn said.
“It remains to be seen if the president will follow through.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment