Cincinnati resident Andrew Pappas supported President Donald Trump’s decision to separate children from parents who crossed the border illegally because, he said, it got Congress talking about immigration reform.
Advertisement
Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is understood to be drafting an order to end the practice of separating children from their parents when they arrive at the border without papers.
“I am also deeply troubled to hear reports that the administration, in its haste to hold innocent children hostage in order to demand funds for a border wall, failed to plan appropriately to reunite these families following their separation”, the Democrat said.
Signing the order in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump told reporters in the room that the administration would still continue its “zero tolerance” policy while still solving the issue of family separation.
Republican leaders in the House are now trying to put together an immigration bill that will keep immigrant children in detention indefinitely, but housed with their parents.
The order opens by declaring that “it is the policy of this Administration to rigorously enforce our immigration laws” while “maintain [ing] family unity, including by detaining alien families together where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources”. Trump’s executive order instructs the attorney general to go to court to seek a change in the Flores settlement, a consent decree that says the government can’t detain immigrant children for more than 20 days.
The detention center is a former Walmart store that was sold in 2016 to a buyer funded by a loan from a company that houses unaccompanied migrant children.
In the meantime, the administration faces ongoing legal challenges. The Attorney General shall, to the extent practicable, prioritize the adjudication of cases involving detained families.
Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hamilton also voiced support for legislation that would allow for prolonged detention of children alongside their parents.
That means that an average of about 65 children per day were separated from their parents along the US-Mexico under the administration’s zero-tolerance initiative.
Trump in a tweet earlier Thursday renewed his call to end the filibuster in the Senate, venting his frustration as his immigration agenda has hit a stalemate on Capitol Hill.
“The president doesn’t get any Brownie points for moving from a policy of locking up kids and families separately to a policy of locking them up together”, said Karen Tumlin, director of legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center. At the same time, we are keeping a very powerful border and it continues to be a zero-tolerance.
The House of Representatives planned to vote on Thursday on two bills created to halt family separations and address a range of other immigration issues.
The adults have been separated from their children, who are eventuallytransferred to longer-term shelters.
“The president watches more cable news than most Americans”, a “person who knows Trump’s mind” told Axios.
Pope Francis also joined the public outcry, telling Reuters he agreed with US Catholic bishops that separating children from their parents at the border was “immoral”.
Nielsen noted how the administration saw a 315 percent increase in immigrants “fraudulently using children to pose as family units to gain entry into this country” from October 2017 to this past February.
Advertisement
“The U.S. authorities create different files for the children than for the parents, and it’s very hard to follow up on those cases”, Torres said.
