New York Times
By Julia Preston
December 15, 2014
Jeh Johnson, the secretary of Homeland Security,
came to this South Texas outpost on Monday to inaugurate a 50-acre
detention center that will hold as many as 2,400 migrants caught
crossing the Southwest border illegally, becoming the largest
immigration detention facility in the country.
Though President Obama has offered work permits and
protection from deportation to millions of unauthorized immigrants, he
also ordered new policies to reinforce border security, hoping to
prevent a new surge of illegal crossings. Mr. Johnson
presided over the opening of the center in Dilley, 85 miles northeast
of Laredo, to draw more attention to the border security pieces of the
president’s executive actions, in response to the furor those actions
caused.
The center is specially designed to house migrant
women and their children, from babies to teenagers, as their deportation
cases move through the courts.
Standing on a barren dirt roadway lined with cabins
in a fenced-in compound, Mr. Johnson delivered a blunt message to
migrants without legal papers considering a trip to the United States.
“It will now be more likely that you will be detained
and sent back,” he said.
Republicans have assailed Mr. Obama’s measures,
saying he overstepped his constitutional authorities with a sweeping
program of deportation reprieves that they predict will attract another
wave of migrants like the one in the Rio Grande
Valley of Texas last summer.
Republican leaders have vowed to halt the programs
when they take control of Congress next year. More than 20 states, led
by Republican officials in Texas, have sued to stop the federal
government from issuing the deportation reprieves.
But the administration’s huge expansion of family
detention has drawn similarly angry criticism from advocates and lawyers
on the other side, who argue that prolonged confinement is
inappropriate for young children and mothers who pose
no security risks. Until now, the largest permanent facility for
migrant families was a center in Pennsylvania with about 100 beds.
“There are no conditions that could make the mass
incarceration of families right,” said Stephen Manning, an immigration
lawyer who led a team of volunteers representing migrant women detained
this year.
Mr. Johnson said the administration is making “a
sharp distinction between past and future,” with all migrants who came
illegally after Jan. 1, 2014, becoming top priorities for deportation.
“This must be clear,” Mr. Johnson said, “Our borders are not open to illegal migration.”
He chastised Republicans in Congress who expressed
their dismay at Mr. Obama’s executive actions by funding the Department
of Homeland Security only through the end of February in a spending bill
passed this weekend.
Mr. Johnson said the short-term funding created
“further jeopardy of homeland security,” after lawmakers did not pass a
supplemental border spending bill the president sought over the summer.
Mr. Johnson said he diverted several hundred
million dollars from disaster emergency funds to pay for a surge of
resources to the border last summer.
“Everyone agrees that border security is
important,” Mr. Johnson said. “Now it’s time to step up and partner with
this department to help support that.”
He announced three new task forces, including one
focused on the Southwest border, to better combine enforcement resources
from different, sometimes competing or overlapping homeland security
agencies.
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