Just read the policy. Are you happy with it?
And if the parents — or whoever has the kids — are not acting in a proper manner? Ie, say they attempt an illegal border crossing.
This is a platitude. Policy based on platitudes is a bad idea.
That remains to be seen
| The main part that is important to the current discussions is that children must be released "without unnecessary delay" to (in order) a parent, a legal guardian; an adult relative (brother, sister, aunt, uncle, or grandparent). A licensed program came after. Therefore, it is illegal to detain a child even if they are with their parents. That is what the courts found when they were asked to clarify the matter for the Obama administration, which tried to detain whole families in 2015 as border crossings increased. But a judge ordered that those women and children be released. Elora Mukherjee, a law professor at Columbia University who represented some of the affected women, at the time said that the courts' "decision confirms that the mass detention of refugee children and their mothers violates U.S. law. Now, the Trump administration would like the courts to reverse that decision. Department of Justice lawyers have asked the courts to modify the Flores Settlement to allow for families to be detained together. "We ask for immediate interim relief from this Court that would permit family detention during immigration proceedings," the filing reads. The DOJ wants: "a limited exemption from its construction of the Flores Settlement Agreement’s release provisions so that ICE may detain alien minors who have arrived with their parent or legal guardian together in ICE family residential facilities." DOJ writes that this is needed due to "the ongoing and worsening influx of families unlawfully entering the United States at the southwest border." It's also the only way that Trump's executive order can hold. He's ordered for the construction of new and reallocation of existing facilities that can be used to detain entire families. But that will only work if the courts agree that doing so does not contradict Flores. |
| Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Twitter Sunday: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period." She added that asylum-seekers would be protected from separations as they always had been: "For those seeking asylum at ports of entry, we have continued the policy from previous administrations and will only separate if the child is in danger, there is no custodial relationship between 'family' members, or if the adult has broken a law." Nielsen and Attorney General Jeff Sessions say women and children will only be separated when they are caught crossing the border "illegally," which they define as crossing between designated ports of entry. NBC News has found that some women are separated from their children even if they are legally claiming asylum and not being referred for prosecution. In those cases, the children are kept in the same facility, but they are still separated for days without being told whether they will be reunited. |
