Immigration Trump to move to expand detentions of migrant families

The Trump administration would have an easier time keeping migrant families locked up together for long periods under a regulation announced Wednesday by acting Homeland Security Department Secretary Kevin McAleenan.

At a press conference at Customs and Border Protection headquarters, McAleenan called the measure an important step to address a humanitarian crisis at the southwest border and said it will speed up immigration court proceedings while keeping families unified in detention.


"The driving factor in this crisis is weakness in our legal framework for immigration,” McAleenan said. “Human smugglers advertise, and impending migrants know well, that even if they cross the border illegally, arriving at our border with a child has meant that they will be released into the United States."

The final rule, which will require court approval before it becomes effective, outlines standards for the care of migrant children and families in the custody of federal immigration authorities. It aims to change licensing requirements for family detention centers and remove a 20-day limit on the detention of children set by a judge enforcing the 1997 Flores settlement agreement, according to a senior department official who briefed some Washington, D.C.-based reporters on the measure.

The Trump administration contends the new regulation should terminate the court agreement, but the move likely will trigger legal challenges.

President Donald Trump has made border security a major focus of his first term in office, and finalizing the detention rule has been a top priority pushed by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller. The administration argues the rule could discourage migrants from trekking to the southwest border to seek asylum or cross illegally into the U.S.

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McAleenan on Wednesday dodged a question about a Washington Post report that said the Trump administration is seeking to negotiate a deal with Panama that would require that country to accept “extracontinental” asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and elsewhere who pass through that country en route to the U.S.

The administration announced a broader asylum pact with Guatemala in July, but that agreement will require several additional steps before taking effect.

McAleenan, who planned to travel to Panama City on Wednesday, said all Central American countries were concerned about asylum seekers from outside of the region for security reasons, but he did not confirm that the administration sought to send such migrants to Panama.

The number of migrants arrested at the border — a metric used to estimate illegal crossings —soared earlier this year to monthly levels not seen in a decade. Families arriving from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador fueled the surge, which has receded in recent months.

The detention regulation is expected a little more than a week after the administration issued its “public charge” rule. That sweeping measure will allow federal immigration authorities to deny green cards to immigrants who receive certain public benefits or are deemed likely to do so — a change critics argue will rework the system to disadvantage poorer families.

The new detention regulation would permit DHS to license family detention centers and aims to supersede a requirement in the Flores agreement that calls for family detention centers to be state-licensed, according to the senior DHS official. States lack those procedures, limiting the government's ability to hold families together.

The administration contends the licensing change would permit the lengthy detention of children with their parents beyond the current 20-day limit. The new regulation does not set an upper limit for how long families could be held in what federal authorities call “family residential centers,” according to the DHS official.

McAleenan argued Wednesday that the new federal standards, if permitted to take effect, would provide a high standard of care for families and would ensure care will not "be subject to the ebbs and flows of state and local politics." He stressed that detained families will be provided food, furniture, bedding, towels, clothing and medical care — all in “campus-like settings.”

Pro-migrant advocacy groups rejected the contention that a regulation to expand family detention would benefit migrants.

Denise Bell, a researcher for refugee and migrant rights with Amnesty International, called the regulation “extraordinarily cruel“ in a written statement.

“It is beyond logic and humanity to attempt to keep children locked up for as long as possible, especially when we know that this subjects them to trauma and extreme distress,” she said. “Children who have already endured violence and persecution would be harmed even further by this policy.“

Speaking to reporters on the White House lawn Wednesday, Trump said the new detention regulation aimed to ensure the safety of children.

“I have the children on my mind,” he said. “It bothers me very greatly. People make this horrible 2,000-mile journey.“

He added that the detention efforts combined with border wall construction will discourage would-be migrants from making the trek to the U.S.

“It all comes together like a beautiful puzzle,” he said.

Democratic lawmakers blasted the push to expand family detention as cruel and punitive.

“The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a scathing written statement. “It's appalling, inhumane family incarceration plan would rip away basic protections for children’s human rights, reversing decades-long and court-imposed rules and violating every standard of morality and civilized behavior.“

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said the new regulation “is about letting President Trump and Stephen Miller keep children in awful conditions for longer periods of time.”

The Trump administration contends the ability to hold families together will allow for a quicker resolution of their immigration court cases. The regulation also will provide migrant families the opportunity to be paroled from detention or post bond if they don’t pose a security threat or flight risk, according to the senior DHS official.

“There’s no intent to hold families for a long period of time,” McAleenan said Wednesday.

The finalized measure will formally publish in the Federal Register Friday. The administration did not release the text of the regulation, but said in a related court filing it likely would be posted online for public review Thursday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintains only 3,326 family detention beds, according to a 2018 Government Accountability Office report. Most of that bed space is located in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, which can hold 2,400 people.

The limited bed space combined with the inability to hold children with their parents beyond 20 days means many families encountered at the border have been released into the U.S. pending an appearance in federal immigration court.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan ripped lawmakers in July for a failure to pass legislation that enables longer detentions of families and allows Central American children to be swiftly deported.

"I believe that they have failed the American people," Morgan told reporters. “They know what they need to do.”

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill in May that would have extended the time children can be held in custody to 100 days and required migrants to apply for asylum from their home countries or Mexico.

But Democrats opposed the measure, S. 1494 (116), and Graham was forced to change committee rules to move it through the committee earlier this month. Several other Trump-aligned immigration bills have failed to gain traction in recent years.

The new detention push comes a year after thousands of migrant families were separated at the border because of the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. Under that initiative, migrant parents were prosecuted for illegal entry and sent to adult detention facilities while their children were labeled “unaccompanied” and placed into the care of the Health and Human Services Department.

Democrats criticized “zero tolerance,” which ran from April 2018 to June 2018, and blamed Trump for precipitating a humanitarian crisis at the border. Amid broad public opposition, Trump issued an executive order that effectively reversed the policy.

The executive order called for families to be detained together, but that remained impossible in most cases due to limited detention space and the inability to hold children beyond the 20-day limit mandated in 2015 by Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee.

In June 2018, Gee rejected a Justice Department attempt to modify the agreement and said the administration was trying “to light a match” to the consent decree. The Trump administration expects legal challenges to the new regulation as well.

During a 60-day public comment period that ended in November, a draft version of the measureattracted more than 100,000 comments.



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