FILE – In this July 16, 2019, file photo, a woman sits with her sons as they wait to apply for asylum in the United States along the border in Tijuana, Mexico. A federal judge rules that the Trump administration is operating within its authority when separating families stopped at the Mexican border, rejecting arguments that it was quietly returning to widespread practices that drew international condemnation. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)

FILE – In this July 17, 2019, file photo, migrant children sleep on a mattress on the floor of the AMAR migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. A federal judge rules that the Trump administration is operating within its authority when separating families stopped at the Mexican border, rejecting arguments that it was quietly returning to widespread practices that drew international condemnation. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A U.S. judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration is operating within its authority when separating families stopped at the Mexico border, rejecting arguments that it was quietly returning to widespread practices that drew international condemnation.

The American Civil Liberties Union argued that the administration was splitting families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions including traffic offenses.

It asked the judge in July to rule on whether the government was justified in separating 911 children during the first year after the judge halted the general practice in June 2018.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw indicated he was uncomfortable second-guessing government decisions to separate children on grounds that parents were considered unfit or dangerous, or in other limited circumstances like criminal history, communicable diseases and doubts about parentage. He found no evidence that the government was abusing its discretion.

“It is an invitation that is potentially massive in scope, invades an area that is particularly within the province of the executive branch to secure the nation’s border, and goes beyond this court’s class certification and preliminary injunction orders, which were focused on the administration’s practice of separating families at the border for the purpose of deterring immigration, and failing to reunify those families,” Sabraw wrote in a 26-page decision.

In a partial victory for the ACLU, the judge said the government must settle any doubts about parentage before separating families by using DNA tests that deliver results in about 90 minutes.

The ruling was a rare instance of the San Diego judge siding with the administration. In June 2018, he halted the practice of separating families under a “zero-tolerance” policy to deter illegal immigration and ordered that about 2,800 children be quickly reunited with family. Lack of adequate tracking systems at the time made reunification a monumental task.

The judge later ordered the administration to identify more than 1,500 additional children who were separated earlier in Trump’s presidency, starting in July 2017. The government is providing information to the ACLU, which, in some cases, has volunteers going door to door in Guatemala.

The ACLU said it was considering its next move.

“The court strongly reaffirmed that the Trump administration bears the burden if it attempts to separate families based on an accusation that the adult is not the child’s parent,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. “We are evaluating the decision to determine the next steps on how to ensure that children are not separated from their parents based on minor infractions.”

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge noted that the administration acknowledged it erred by separating a mother who needed emergency surgery and a father who was HIV-positive. He rejected the ACLU’s contention that some accusations of gang affiliation were unfounded, saying that the government relies on “objective evidence, not allegations or intuition.”

Days before the judge halted the widespread practice of separating families in 2018, Trump retreated under extraordinary criticism by exempting families from his “zero-tolerance” policy to criminally prosecute every adult who crosses the border illegally.

Source: https://apnews.com/2f05615a61b9ba11ce553db6bff824c2

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Just less than half of those detained in raids on seven food processing plants in Bay Springs, Carthage, Canton, Morton, Pelahatchie, and Sebastapol were released from custody Wednesday evening, ICE spokesperson Bryan Cox told the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger Thursday.

Cox said Wednesday afternoon that while everyone detained would be processed, “not everyone is going to be [permanently] detained,” according to the newspaper.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Mississippi called the raids, the biggest single-state immigration enforcement operation in history, “unnecessary and cruel.”

“We are deeply concerned that the raids have separated Mississippians’ families, disrupted our local economy, and diverted our state’s limited resources to support Trump’s mass deportation agenda,” ACLU of Mississippi legal director and interim executive director Joshua Tom said in a statement.

“Local law enforcement should refuse to cooperate with the president’s anti-immigrant policies. We stand in solidarity and are committed to helping the families harmed,” he added.

The agency said ICE agents “made cellphones available” to allow detainees to make child-care arrangements, according to the Clarion-Ledger, and said that any couples or single parents with minor children at home were released on humanitarian grounds.

While their parents were detained, numerous children were reportedly left temporarily homeless and made to sleep in a community gym, although all were reportedly returned to either their homes or those of relatives by Wednesday night.

The terms of release for those released were not immediately clear, according to The Associated Press, nor did ICE specify whether those released were determined to be undocumented. ICE had previously said they would release detainees who were pregnant or had not previously faced immigration proceedings.

The Hill has reached out to ICE for clarification.

Source: https://thehill.com/latino/456736-300-of-680-people-detained-in-mississippi-ice-raids-released-report

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The decision, which split the bench along ideological lines, allows the administration to move ahead with plans to use military funds to replace existing fencing in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.

The conservative justices on the court ruled in favor of the administration. Liberal justices Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. And Justice Stephen Breyer issued a split opinion, agreeing in part with both sides.

The president celebrated the ruling on Twitter: “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. The United States Supreme Court overturns lower court injunction, allows Southern Border Wall to proceed. Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law!”

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court recognized that the lower courts should not have halted construction of walls on the southern border,” Justice Department spokesperson Alexei Woltornist said in a statement. “We will continue to vigorously defend the Administration’s efforts to protect our Nation.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which opposes the funding for the wall, vowed to keep fighting.

“This is not over,” said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project. “We will be asking the federal appeals court to expedite the ongoing appeals proceeding to halt the irreversible and imminent damage from Trump’s border wall. Border communities, the environment, and our Constitution’s separation of powers will be permanently harmed should Trump get away with pillaging military funds for a xenophobic border wall Congress denied.”

The ruling means the Trump administration can tap the funds and begin work covered by four contracts it has awarded.

A trial court initially froze the funds in May and an appeals court kept that freeze in place earlier this month. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue.

Earlier this month, a divided three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco agreed with a lower-court ruling that prevented the government from tapping Defense Department counterdrug money to build high-priority sections of the planned wall in the three aforementioned states.

At stake are billions of dollars in funding that would allow Trump to make progress on a major 2016 campaign promise heading into his race for a second term.

Trump declared a national emergency after losing a funding fight with the Democrat-led House that resulted in a 35-day government shutdown. Congress agreed to spend nearly $1.4 billion on barriers in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings, an amount well below the $5.7 billion the president had sought.

Trump grudgingly accepted the money but declared the emergency in order to tap up to $8.1 billion for wall construction. That amount includes $3.6 billion from military construction funds, $2.5 billion from Defense Department counterdrug activities and $600 million from the Treasury Department’s asset forfeiture fund.

Fox News’ Shannon Bream and Bill Mears and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/supreme-court-paves-way-for-trump-administration-to-use-military-funds-for-border-wall

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The US government is introducing a new fast-track deportation process that will bypass immigration courts.

Under the new rules, migrants who cannot prove they have been in the US continuously for more than two years can be immediately deported.

Until now, expedited deportations could only be applied to those detained near the border who had been in the US for less than two weeks.

Rights groups say hundreds of thousands of people could be affected.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says it will challenge the policy in court.

The new rule is expected to be implemented with immediate effect after it is published on Tuesday.

• Is there a crisis on the US-Mexico border?
• Step into the shoes of a migrant crossing the southern border
• ‘The women were told to drink out of a toilet bowl’

US immigration policy has come under increasing scrutiny in recent months – in particular, the conditions at the country’s detention centers on the southern border with Mexico.

Kevin McAleenan, acting secretary of Homeland Security, said the change was “a necessary response to the ongoing immigration crisis” and would help to relieve the burden on courts and detention centers.

US Border Patrol says it has made 688,375 apprehensions on the south-west border since October 2018, more than double that of the previous fiscal year.

Several analysts predict US President Donald Trump will make hardline immigration control a key element of his re-election campaign in 2020.

What’s changing?

Previously, only people detained within 100 miles (160km) of the border who had been in the US for less than two weeks could be deported quickly.

Migrants who were found elsewhere, or who had been in the country for more than two weeks, would need to be processed through the courts and would be entitled to legal representation.

But the new rules state that people can be deported regardless of where in the country they are when they are detained, and without allowing them access to a lawyer.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the new rules would allow it to pursue large numbers of illegal migrants more efficiently.

There are 10.5 million undocumented migrants in the US, according to the Pew Research Center – Reuters

Who is affected?

There are about 10.5 million undocumented immigrants in the US, according to the Pew Research Center.

The average undocumented adult immigrant has lived in the country for 15 years, it says.

The DHS has said it could make exceptions for those with serious medical conditions or “substantial connections” to the US.

It also says migrants who are eligible for asylum will still be entitled to speak to an asylum officer, who will access their claims.

Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer from the Migration Policy Institute, says many migrants will struggle to be able to prove how long they have lived in the country when they are put on the spot.

He told CBS News: “When you’re apprehended on the street or at a factory, it’s obviously not easy to establish with evidence that you’ve been here for more than two years because you’re not carrying all your documents with you.”

Who is objecting?

Within hours of the policy being announced on Monday, the ACLU said that it was planning to launch a legal challenge.

“We are suing to quickly stop Trump’s efforts to massively expand the expedited removal of immigrants,” the rights group tweeted.

• Six surprising statistics about immigrants in the US
• What’s the state of illegal immigration in the US?

“Immigrants that have lived here for years will have less due process rights than people get in traffic court. The plan is unlawful. Period.”

Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told reporters: “The Trump administration is moving forward into converting ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] into a ‘show me your papers’ militia.”

Legal expert Jackie Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University, told Reuters that about 1% of the people detained by ICE and 0.5% of those deported were actually US citizens.

“Expedited removal orders are going to make this much worse,” she said.

Who is objecting?

Within hours of the policy being announced on Monday, the ACLU said that it was planning to launch a legal challenge.

“We are suing to quickly stop Trump’s efforts to massively expand the expedited removal of immigrants,” the rights group tweeted.

• Six surprising statistics about immigrants in the US
• What’s the state of illegal immigration in the US?

“Immigrants that have lived here for years will have less due process rights than people get in traffic court. The plan is unlawful. Period.”

Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, told reporters: “The Trump administration is moving forward into converting ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] into a ‘show me your papers’ militia.”

Legal expert Jackie Stevens, a political science professor at Northwestern University, told Reuters that about 1% of the people detained by ICE and 0.5% of those deported were actually US citizens.

“Expedited removal orders are going to make this much worse,” she said.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49079495

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COUNT THE ways in which the government under President Donald Trump has grown more hostile to foreigners who seek sanctuary. For years America led the world, resettling more persecuted people as refugees than any other country. During the Cold War, especially, welcoming asylum seekers from countries under Soviet oppression sent a message that American democracy was more self-confident and open than any rival political system. Few arrived at a land border; most were processed by officials overseas: for example, the “boat people” who fled war in Vietnam, were processed in South East Asia and transferred as refugees to America in the 1970s. More recently Somalis fleeing conflict in the Horn of Africa, or victims of persecution in the Middle East found homes in America.

Mr. Trump has already dramatically cut how many are resettled in this way. Last fiscal year just 22,500 refugees were resettled in America (Canada now accepts more). That was down from 110,000 who were expected (by Barack Obama’s administration) for fiscal 2017. Yet as the number of resettled refugees fell, and amid efforts to deter and deport unauthorized immigrants, there was a surge in asylum applications at America’s southern border. Most were people fleeing Central America, notably El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. Many say, plausibly, that they are escaping widespread criminal violence and the threat of abduction or murder by gangs. In practice, distinguishing between such cases and plain economic migrants is hard.

Relatively few have been processed, so as a big backlog has built up, thousands of people have been stranded in northern Mexico, where applications for asylum are considered. That has added to a widespread impression of a crisis at the border. Mr. Trump responded this week with a new interim order, one issued without congressional approval. Under this, a person who crosses through a third country—for example, a Guatemalan who passes through Mexico en route to America—may no longer seek asylum. The new rule insists that an individual must have sought asylum in that third country, and been rejected, before moving on to try for sanctuary in America. It will apply to unaccompanied children, as well as adults.

Only three exceptions to the new rule are allowed. It will not apply to victims of trafficking, to the tiny numbers of people who seek to reach America by sea, or to those who arrive in the United States having only passed through countries that have not signed the UN refugee convention or the convention against torture, such as North Korea.

The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has said it is “deeply concerned” by the interim rule. It might well be. The UN’s refugee convention allows for refugees to pass through third countries—think of Vietnamese boat people who initially went to Thailand or other parts of Asia—before lodging an asylum appeal elsewhere. Remove that principle and the effect is to tell the (mostly poor) countries next door to war-torn or violent ones that only they, and not rich ones, have a duty to help refugees. The governments of Central America will not go along with this. Mexico’s government has rejected the proposal as “severe” and “not the best way forward”. A court in Guatemala has prevented that country from agreeing to act as a “safe third country” to which America can deport asylum-seekers.

The American Civil Liberties Union has said the rule, which takes force on July 16th, is “patently unlawful” and it will sue to scrap it. Democrats, too, are opposed. Mr. Trump may be calculating that a dust-up over this issue will help him politically, even if he loses. If a court or Congress were to overturn the rule, that could energize his nativist base: 73% of those who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 “strongly approve” of his handling of immigration; only 4% “strongly disapprove” and most of the remainder are supportive. On the campaign trail next year, he will doubtless tell voters that only he can be trusted to keep outsiders from gaming the immigration system.

The Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a think-tank in Washington, notes that Mr. Trump’s new policy is similar to one that Europeans have long pursued. In Norway, for example, anyone arriving at its border after first passing through neighboring Russia (as some Syrians did in 2015) is denied asylum because Russia has been declared a safe third country for refugees. Similarly, the Dublin convention in Europe insists that those seeking asylum within the EU must apply in their first country of arrival—a rule that (if properly applied) would place most of the burden of processing them in countries with a Mediterranean coastline, such as Italy and Greece, and hardly any on northern countries. On an even larger scale, European countries give large amounts of foreign aid to the third countries through which refugees typically pass, such as Turkey and Libya, so that those countries will stop the refugees from crossing the Mediterranean. Australia, too, has paid for third countries in the Pacific to host asylum seekers who had tried to get down under.

The lessons from these international examples are complicated, says the MPI. It is not clear that safe third-country agreements are implemented effectively—few asylum-seekers actually get returned from EU countries to Turkey, for example. And if the real point of such deals were to deter asylum seekers from making journeys in the first place, then it is not obvious that it works. Unless the third countries use rather brutal force to detain asylum seekers, as Turkey and Libya do, then the flow of people tends to continue. Big payments, in the form of billions of dollars in foreign aid, are essential for buying co-operation from countries (or even warlords) who operate at a distance from Europe’s borders, clamping down on asylum seekers out of sight of European eyes. For the safe third country system to work, in other words, it seems to need willing and rather authoritarian partners who will lock up asylum seekers or otherwise prevent their movement. The proposed solution to the increase in asylum seekers thus relies on the very thing the system was originally intended to undermine.

Source: https://www.economist.com/democracy-in-america/2019/07/16/america-closes-the-doors-to-asylum-seekers-from-the-south

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