New York Times
By Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Ron Nixon
May 29, 2018
Attempting to turn the tables politically on President Trump’s own immigration policy, administration officials on Tuesday defended new measures they are taking to separate children from migrant parents who cross the United States’ southern border without authorization, blaming the situation on Democrats who have bitterly denounced it.
Top officials from the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security argued that a series of court rulings and laws that existed when Mr. Trump took office had essentially given them no choice but to carry out a policy that many human rights groups have condemned as inhumane.
The officials said it was Democrats, who have opposed Mr. Trump’s efforts to impose stricter immigration policies, who were forcing them to use the bare-knuckle tactics.
“A nation cannot have a principle that there will be no civil or criminal immigration enforcement for somebody traveling with a child,” Stephen Miller, Mr. Trump’s senior adviser for policy and an architect of the president’s immigration agenda, said in a conference call with journalists.
“The current immigration and border crisis, and all of the attendant concerns it raises, are the exclusive product of loopholes,” Mr. Miller added, “that Democrats refuse to close.”
The argument appeared designed to undergird the message from the president himself over the weekend, when he lay the child separation policy at the feet of his political opponents.
In a Saturday post on Twitter, Mr. Trump wrote: “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S.”
There is, in fact, no such law. A court settlement from 1997 sharply limits the amount of time during which families can be held in detention by immigration authorities when they are encountered at the border.
Spurred on by the president, Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, last month announced a “zero tolerance” policy in which people who cross the border illegally are to be subject to criminal prosecution. On Tuesday, the administration officials argued that the two directives, taken together, essentially left them with no option other than to take children from their parents at the border.
Democrats have rejected Mr. Trump’s attempts to blame them for the policy.
“Your administration made the policy change to separate children from their parents,” Representative Ted Lieu, Democrat of California, wrote on a tweet on Saturday that was addressed to the president. “If you don’t have the courage to own up to it, then reverse it. Disgraceful & weak to blame others for your own evil policy.”
Devin O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman, said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump’s election served as a mandate “to restore legality to the southwest border.”
“The attorney general has been very clear that this rule of law is simple, that aliens who illegally enter the United States will be criminally prosecuted,” Mr. O’Malley said. “They will not be given a free pass, and that is irrespective of whether or not they have brought a child with them.”
Immigrant advocacy groups dismissed the Trump administration’s rationale as a lie being used as a pretext to enact a barbaric policy.
“Deliberately separating children from parents to sow fear in parents as a deterrence is unprecedented and beyond cruel,” Ur Jaddou, the director of DHS Watch at America’s Voice, said in a statement, calling the separation policy “an abomination.”
“Trump must stop lying to the public and end this barbaric policy,” Ms. Jaddou said. “There are no ‘loopholes’ nor statutory requirements that children be ripped from their parents’ arms as a matter of routine practice.”
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
No comments:
Post a Comment