By Louise Radnofsky
WASHINGTON—The Trump administration laid out ways to move more aggressively against Central Americans seeking asylum in the U.S., including stepping up pressure on Department of Homeland Security officials, amid a fresh setback in the courts and continued resistance on Capitol Hill.
A senior administration official on Tuesday said the White House is considering attempting to restrict the flow of remittances from the U.S., in order to discourage migrants. The White House is also considering giving parents a choice of being voluntarily separated from their children while they are jailed, waiting for a judge’s ruling on their asylum case, or waiving their rights and agreeing to be jailed together, the official said.
The comments came as President Trump has moved to take closer control of DHS. In the past week, Mr. Trump pulled the nomination of acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Ron Vitiello and accepted the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Mr. Trump and his aides have also expressed unhappiness with Lee Cissna as director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the general counsel at the DHS, and other officials throughout the department.
“Homeland security, that is exactly what we want,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Tuesday. Asked about the changes at DHS, he played down their scope. “I never said I’m cleaning house. I don’t know who came up with that. We have bad laws.”
Legal and political setbacks on immigration policy have impeded many of the president’s moves on the issue. Late Monday, a federal court blocked the administration’s efforts to make Central Americans wait in Mexico while their asylum claims are adjudicated. Mr. Trump earlier cancelled a family-separation policy that was denounced by lawmakers of both parties as cruel, and was also blocked by courts. The president on Tuesday said he wouldn’t restart that policy, after previously floating the idea.
This year, he issued his first veto after lawmakers in both parties objected to his use of an emergency declaration to get more money for border barriers.
“We are bucking a court system that never ever rules for us, and we are bucking really bad things with the Democrats in Congress not willing to act,” Mr. Trump said on Tuesday.
Monday’s court injunction removes another option from the White House’s policy choices. Customs and Border Protection officials on Tuesday said 53,000 people traveling as families had been apprehended at the southern border in March, as well as another 8,900 children traveling alone and 30,000 single adults.
The ruling is set to take effect on Friday, and the White House on Tuesday said it would appeal the decision.
The senior administration official said Mr. Trump and top aides have concluded that some of the rise in migrants with children stems from what they see as specific administrative failures on the part of leaders at DHS and its U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services division.
Earlier, Senate Republicans signaled their unease with the changes at the top of DHS. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa.) told Fox News that he was surprised by Ms. Nielsen’s departure and warned it would be a “real mistake” to fire Mr. Cissna.
Immigration advocates and lawyers have argued that being forced to give up their rights or those of their children leaves parents in an impossible position.
At present, most Central Americans seeking asylum traveling as families are currently released into the U.S. pending a hearing. Many end up living and working in the U.S., a process panned by Republicans, including Mr. Trump.
The senior administration official said DHS leaders’ support for the president’s immigration agenda wasn’t necessarily in question, but that they had been unable to clear obstacles to implementing it. The official said there were no immediate personnel announcements, but that the final decisions on personnel would fall to Kevin McAleenan, currently the CBP commissioner, whom the president wants to install as the acting secretary of DHS. “The point person on immigration in the administration is Kevin McAleenan,” the official said, adding that “things can be rehabilitated” at DHS.
The official ticked off a number of perceived missteps by DHS officials. The official said DHS failed to draft regulations that would extend the length of time the U.S. could detain child migrants. The official also cited Mr. Cissna’s agency issuing work authorizations to Central American asylum-seekers allowed to remain in the U.S. while their claims are adjudicated, as well as DHS’s failure to use legal tools to restrict the number of asylum seekers deemed to have a credible fear of persecution in their home country.
The acting deputy secretary, Claire Grady, offered her resignation, effective Wednesday, Ms. Nielsen said on Twitter. If Ms. Grady had still been serving in her role when Ms. Nielsen officially steps down on Wednesday, a federal statute would have required her to be named acting secretary, instead of Mr. McAleenan.
Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are working on a bill that would change the way Central American children are treated, essentially removing protections they have as asylum-seekers from noncontiguous countries and applying instead the process for swiftly removing Mexican or Canadian children. They are also looking to amend the law on child detention to allow them to be held for up to 90 days while their cases are processed.
“Consequences work. People are going to respond to policy changes.…What’s cruel is a parent sending a child by themselves,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, who said last week he was drafting legislation in conjunction with CBP and Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). “They’ll stop coming, and that’s got to be the goal of our policy.”
Such suggestions are a nonstarter among liberal immigration activists. “We completely reject the idea that the only way out is to, for instance, change the rules about how long children can be detained, or treat children who are coming from the border from Central America differently,” said Chris Rickerd of the ACLU National Political Advocacy Department.
Democrats, who control the House and have sufficient votes in the Senate to block legislation, have also criticized the proposals.
“Many of the individuals he forced out presided over family separation, attacks on our asylum system and steep cuts to refugee admissions. Even Senate Republicans may balk at ‘tougher’ replacements,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.). “President Trump is trying to remake DHS into his own personal anti-immigration agency.”
The Obama administration also tried detaining arriving migrant families as a deterrent to them coming; courts made clear officials couldn’t hold children beyond 20 days. In addition to the legal limits on detaining children beyond 20 days, the government only has space to detain an average of 2,250 people traveling as families anyway, fewer than the number that arrive almost every day.
For more information, go to: http://www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment