Tag: family separation
Trump family separation policy protest.

Reunions Begin For Migrant Families Torn Apart By Trump Policy

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

So far, Joe Biden's presidency has marked a return to the U.S./Mexico border policy of the Obama years. Biden and others in his administration have stressed that border security is a priority but firmly rejected the widely criticized policy of separating families at the border that former President Donald Trump installed. Biden's change in policy, according to reporting by the Daily Beast's Scott Bixby and CNN's Kate Bolduan this week, is reflected in the reunion of some families that were separated at the border under Trump's presidency.

"Nearly three years to the day after the Trump Administration first forcibly separated thousands of undocumented parents from their children in order to discourage others from seeking asylum," Bixby reports, "the Department of Homeland Security has begun reunifying families torn apart by the policy — four families, to be exact, with a few dozen more expected in the coming weeks."

Bixby points out that the Trump Administration's "zero tolerance" policy at the U.S./Mexico border resulted in "an estimated 5500 families" being separated.

According to Bixby, "Advocates warn that it may take years to reunite parents and children separated by the policy — and could add to the rising crush of undocumented people seeking to enter the United States via other means. The Biden Administration announced, in February, that it was creating a task force in charge of reuniting families separated under 'zero tolerance' and other Trump-era initiatives intended to discourage migrants from coming to the United States."

On Monday, Alejandro Mayorkas — secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security — announced, "The Family Reunification Task Force has been working day and night, across the federal government and with counsel for the families and our foreign partners, to address the prior administration's cruel separation of children from their parents. Today is just the beginning. We are reuniting the first group of families; many more will follow, and we recognize the importance of providing these families with the stability and resources they need to heal."

On CNN, Bolduan reported Wedneday that one of the Biden-era reunions had taken place in Philadelphia — where a Honduran mother who arrived at the border with her two sons in 2017 was reunited with them. The woman was deported from the U.S. and separated from her sons, and they have been staying with extended family. In Philadelphia, the sons saw their mother for the first time since the separation.

Bolduan discussed that reunion with Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants Rights Project.

Speaking to Bolduan from Philadelphia, Gelernt said of the reunion, "I almost don't have the words to describe it. It was so emotional, really just gut-wrenching, these boys hugging their mother for what seemed like an eternity — all of them sobbing, the extended family sobbing…. If you could see this family and the hardship they had gone through — and then, the joy in being reunited. That's what it's ultimately all about."

Bolduan pointed out that when the Honduran woman was separated from her sons, they were teenagers. One was 14, the other 15; now, they are both in their late teens.

Gelernt told Bolduan, "I think anybody who has teenage sons — you know, these were 14- and 15-year-olds — knows how difficult a period that is. These boys came to another country, to another culture, had to learn a new language. And they had to navigate all of that without their mother. It's just unimaginable. They've stayed strong, and for them to see their mother was just unbelievably joyous."

Bolduan asked Gelernt what will happen to the family now that they have been reunited, to which the ACLU attorney replied, "So, she will be allowed to stay for a minimum of three years with work authorization. But the more important thing is the ACLU is negotiating with the Biden Administration for far more than that. It's not enough just to reunify these families; we need to get them compensation. We need to get them social services, including mental health services. And we need to get them legal permanent status."

Gelernt added, "We'll never make these families whole again, but we need to try at least try — and that's the minimum. So, these are the first four families. It's a long haul."

Watch the video below:

CNN/Family separationwww.youtube.com

How Trump Created The ‘Border Crisis’ — And How Biden Can Fix It

How Trump Created The ‘Border Crisis’ — And How Biden Can Fix It

In 2014, the Obama administration was faced with a surge in unaccompanied minors from Central America showing up at our border and seeking asylum. In an effort to reduce the number of kids trekking across Mexico, it created a program to let them apply for asylum in their home countries. Some 13,000 did, helping to ease the rush.

You can guess what happened next. Donald Trump became president and acted on his twin beliefs: anything that Barack Obama did was bad, and anything that helped foreigners was worse. He killed the program, and soon the number of Central American kids crossing over began to grow. By the spring of 2019, his administration was faced with its very own crisis at the border.

His Department of Homeland Security responded with harsh measures — separating children from parents in large numbers, expelling children from Central America into Mexico and forcing asylum seekers to remain for months in Mexico in squalid camps.

Today, we see another tide of Central Americans coming north, and Republicans blame President Joe Biden for enticing them. They refer to it as "Biden's border crisis," as though it suddenly exploded on January 20.

In fact, it emerged when the White House was just a gleam in Biden's eye. The increase began last spring and built steadily over the remainder of Trump's presidency. From May to October, the number of "southwest land border encounters" recorded by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol nearly tripled. In truth, it was dire conditions in their home countries that drove the migrants.

Republicans claim they were emboldened by Biden's plan to stop work on Trump's border wall — the one Mexico was supposed to pay for. That theory is implausible, because Trump added only 47 miles of barriers in places that didn't have them before.

"Only a few miles were built in South Texas, the area most prone to illegal crossings," The New York Times recently reported. "Instead, much of the construction, especially in the Trump administration's closing days, has taken place in remote parts of Arizona where crossings in recent years have been relatively uncommon."

If Biden deserves any responsibility for the recent surge, it's not because of what he did wrong but because of what he did right. Trump's fondness for systematic cruelty may have discouraged some Central Americans. But the cruelty was impossible to justify, even for an ostensibly good purpose.

Under Trump's zero tolerance policy, thousands of children were taken from their parents when the families crossed the border to exercise their right to seek political asylum. Most of the parents were sent back to their home countries. Some of the kids spent weeks sleeping on the floor in chain-link cages. Last fall, we learned the horrifying truth that the Trump administration had lost track of the parents of 545 children, making it impossible to reunite the families.

The brutality was a design feature. Trump's White House Chief of Staff John Kelly boasted that "a big name of the game is deterrence." But sometimes deterrence asks too much.

There are alternative remedies, such as letting more foreigners in through authorized channels. But Trump was against immigration of any sort. His administration virtually eliminated admissions for refugees, and last year, it slashed the number of green cards for legal permanent residents.

Today, the worldwide backlog of applications for green cards is at five million. Many recipients have to wait ten years or more to be admitted. Cato Institute analysts David Bier and Alex Nowrasteh reach this startling conclusion: "At no time in American history has immigration been as legally restricted as it is currently."

For the moment, the Biden administration has the task of coping with the border crisis while dismantling the inhumane practices of its predecessor. In the longer term, it could relieve pressure on the border by increasing refugee admissions and allotting more slots to the Central American countries that have produced so many migrants.

It could create a program for guest workers from Mexico and Central America, as proposed by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Biden has already moved to restore the Central American Minors Program to provide "a safe, legal, and orderly alternative to the risks incurred in the attempt to migrate to the United States irregularly."

Giving people an avenue to come here legally in order to keep them from coming illegally? A crazy idea, but it just might work.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

DHS Nominee Will Lead Task Force To Reunite Migrant Children With Families

DHS Nominee Will Lead Task Force To Reunite Migrant Children With Families

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

The Biden administration is expected to announce on Tuesday its federal task force dedicated to reuniting families that were separated at the southern border by the previous administration, including hundreds of children who continue to remain apart nearly four years after the initial "piloting" of the barbaric "zero tolerance" policy.

NBC News initially reported that Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden's nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), would be heading the interdepartmental task force. This was later confirmed by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. "When the task force is announced," the report continued, "it is expected to be an inter-agency effort across the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services and the State Department."

Biden as a candidate pledged that he would authorize a federal task force to help reunite families on Day One, but as NBC News reported, this has been delayed for nearly two weeks. No official reason has been given by the Biden administration, but one likely reason is Senate Republicans blocking Mayorkas' quick confirmation. A second likely reason is the "extraordinarily complicated" nature of the separations, NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow.

"It's complicated not just because of the cruelty and the intentionality that went into this policy to separate 5,000 kids, over 5,000 kids from their parents, including Ms. L, who was separated and then detained, the namesake of the lawsuit that won the reunification of all the families right here in Otay Mesa," he said in the clip, reporting from the California city where many separated families were jailed. "But also because after the separations, there are so many different distinct groups of separated families, and how ultimately President Biden and his administration will deal with them. What is the relief that they will offer?"

Per early reporting on the task force from NBC News, "The task force announcement is not expected to include details on whether the families will be given special permission to come to the United States to reunite with their children." Advocate organizations that have already been tasked by the court with reuniting families, like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have urged Biden to allow families to return to the U.S. and be given legal status. Lawmakers including Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro have also urged for U.S. reunification.

Castro had also called for the formation of a special commission to investigate this human rights disaster, telling Vox that it's "the right thing to do and also, in many ways, necessary for our country."

Two of the agencies that will work to reunite families were at the center of separations, with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general saying in a report last year that senior HHS officials paid no heed to concerns from Office of Refugee Resettlement staffers about forcibly separating children from their parents. That report described officials' intentional negligence regarding what ultimately became the family separation crisis, including superiors scolding staffers for putting concerns in writing.

Years after the "piloting" of family separation in 2017, hundreds of children separated from their parents by the previous administration have continued to remain separated, and new reporting from The Washington Post reveals that some families that have been reunited have faced separation all over again due to parents and children having separate immigration cases. "Even after families were reunited by the court, the Trump administration tried to re-separate them by deporting the parent," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told the Post. "Incredibly, one separation was not enough for the Trump administration."

In order to reverse the horrific, intentional damage inflicted by the previous administration, the Biden administration must start by returning these families, and giving them protections. It's the right, and just, thing to do.

#EndorseThis: Trump's Cruelty To Children Must Never Happen Again

#EndorseThis: Trump's Cruelty To Children Must Never Happen Again

Next to the massive negligent homicide caused by Trump's response to coronavirus, the criminal mistreatment of immigrant children is his administration's worst offense. Caged, terrorized, deprived of medical treatment and adequate sanitation, even food, the innocents who crossed the border fell into a nightmare created by the White House. Some will never awake from that nightmare because they died, but others – at least 545 at last count – have been left effectively orphaned because their parents cannot be found.

That is what the "family separation" perpetrated by Trump and his law enforcement apparatus has meant. It is a gross offense to human rights, American traditions, and the reputation of the United States among the world's nations.

Watch "Cruel" for one minute as People for the American Way and the Lincoln Project remind us why we are all so angry at this government for tormenting children and shaming our country. Then go out and do something about it.