U.S. to begin deporting families with deportation orders, head of ICE warns

President Donald Trump's top immigration enforcer told Congress on Tuesday that his agency will soon begin aggressively deporting immigrant families who have been ordered to leave the United States but haven't left.

"One thing ICE is in the process of doing is we are going to step up our enforcement of family units that have final orders of removal," ICE Interim Director Thomas Homan said during a House Border Security and Maritime subcommittee hearing. "They’ve had their due process. They’ve been ordered removed by an immigration judge."

Homan said in April that he is retiring in June. As Trump's pick to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Homan was charged with increasing immigration enforcement and cracking down on so-called sanctuary cities.

During Tuesday's hearing, Homan told members of Congress the agency will deport families despite the backlash he expects to receive.

"Of course, I expect a lot of letters, 'Why are targeting families and not criminals.' But if they are given their due process and a federal judge makes a decision, if we don’t execute those decisions there is no integrity in the system," Homan said. "So, you are going to see a lot more enforcement here during the future on that."

Tuesday's subcommittee hearing was held to discuss ways of stopping a continuing wave of undocumented families and unaccompanied children, mostly from Central America, from coming to the U.S. border and applying for asylum to stay in the United States.

It was chaired by U.S. Rep. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., who said she wants to close "loopholes" in the immigration system she claims are being exploited by families and children making fraudulent asylum claims.

The hearing was prompted partly by a caravan of Central American migrants, mostly from Honduras, that traveled for more than a month through Mexico and arrived in Tijuana late April. The caravan prompted the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to help tighten security along the Southwestern border with Mexico and adopt a "zero tolerance" policy to prosecute every person caught entering the country illegally, including parents arriving with children, who as a result will be separated from their children.

'Our asylum process is broken'

"Our asylum process is broken, rife with fraudulent claims," McSally said. "Individuals who arrive at our border have no need to dodge our border security efforts because our policies make it all too easy for them. Aliens can simply come to a port of entry or look for a Border Patrol agent and simply say they have 'credible fear'.

"Saying these simple two words allows them to be released into the country about 90 percent of the time, regardless of the merits of their claim," she said.

McSally is one of the three leading Republican candidates running to replace incumbent U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who is not seeking re-election.

U.S. Rep. Nanette Barragan, D-Calif., who sits on the subcommittee, suggested McSally was using Tuesday's hearing to score political points by portraying families and children seeking asylum in the United States after fleeing violence in Central America as a threat to the United States.

"It makes me sick to my stomach to keep hearing over and over, painting the broad strokes and the picture, that these are people coming here to do harm," Barragan said. "It's just unbelievable to me how this rhetoric continues and to see it continue in a campaign season, it just gets even worse and worse. Just because people get asylum doesn't mean it's a fraud."

Immigration officials told members of the House subcommittee that 327 members of the caravan were allowed into the U.S. after presenting themselves to border officers at the San Ysidro port of entry and asked to apply for asylum.

Of those, 216 have gone through interviews by immigration officials to determine whether their claims of fear of persecution if returned to their home countries were credible. Of those, 205 passed credible fear interviews, the first step in applying for asylum, a process that can take months and sometimes years, officials said.

Also, 122 people who claimed to have been part of the caravan were caught by Border Patrol agents after they tried to cross the border illegally, officials said.

Support for deporting families

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a research center that favors more immigration enforcement, said deporting families who have remained in the United States after failing in their asylum claims would deter others from coming.

"No one is immune from the law just because they have a family, and children should not be used as a deportation shield," she said. "I have no doubt that anti-enforcement advocates will try to portray ICE as heartless and cruel, but I think most people understand why this is necessary, even if we sympathize with the migrants’ predicament."

Clara Long, senior researcher of the U.S. program at Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group, said many families fail in their asylum claims because they did not have access to due process, not because they didn't have a strong case, or because they appeared in front of immigration judges who reject asylum claims "as a matter of course."

Deporting families back to violence-plagued countries could result in their deaths, she said.

"The consequence of getting a deportation wrong is very, very serious," she said. "Many of them are fleeing specific threats from criminals actors, some of them are fleeing domestic violence for which they cannot be protected by the state, many of these people have really legitimate risk of losing their lives if they are returned."

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