Starting this week, hundreds of families caught each day in that area are being released by Border Patrol agents, instead of being handed over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
for potentially longer detention, government officials said. The exact
number will depend on how many there is room for in ICE detention
facilities, which have filled up
as a record volume of families are crossing the border.
The officials said they are making the change because of crowding and safety concerns. The
conditions under which the federal government detains migrant families,
particularly those with young children, have drawn frequent criticism
in the past few years. Two migrant Guatemalan children died in Border Patrol custody in December.
ICE’s three family detention centers can hold several thousand people at a time. Families with children can spend
up to 20 days in them under current law.
Under the new policy, some families will be processed by the Border
Patrol and then released and ordered to show up later to start their
deportation or asylum cases.
The policy change runs counter to President Trump’s
repeated pledge to end what he called “catch-and-release”
at the border in favor of “catch-and-detain.”
But as the volume of families has reached record levels in the past several months, immigration authorities have struggled to make room for them all.
Migrants released directly by the Border Patrol will be given a
notice to appear, a legal document that orders them to report to
immigration authorities in the interior of the country. Unlike adult
migrants with children released by ICE, they will not be given ankle
monitors to track their movements.
For years the Rio Grande Valley has been the busiest stretch of border for families crossing into the U.S. illegally. [Over a period of 5 months] Between Oct. 1, [2018] the start of the federal government’s fiscal year, and the end of February [2019, five months], more than 58,000 such migrants have been arrested in the area, about 42% of the more than 136,000 nationwide.
Most of the families are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and say they are fleeing violence, poverty and corruption.
Nearly all say they are afraid to go home and ask for asylum in the
U.S. Though winning asylum is a long shot for most migrants, the legal process can take several years to complete and most families are allowed to live in the U.S. while they wait for a judge to decide their fate.
The Trump administration has been trying to curb the rising flood of families
and last year enacted a zero-tolerance policy that led to the
separation of thousands of children from their parents, who were charged
with a misdemeanor for crossing the border illegally.
Mr. Trump issued an executive order in June [2018]
to end family separations
amid a class-action lawsuit and
outcry from immigration advocates and lawmakers, including some Republicans.
Also in June [2018] a federal judge in San Diego
ordered the government to reunite
all of the children and their parents, a process still ongoing.
The Trump administration has recently started to send some Central
American migrants, including families, who cross the border in
California to request asylum back to Mexico to wait for a judge to decide their case.
Six migrants from the first group sent back to Mexico appeared in
federal immigration court in San Diego for the first time on Tuesday.
None of their cases was immediately decided."
“Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.” Appeared in March 20, 2019, print edition.
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Added: 3/11/2019, ICE officials say Trump failed to follow through on his promises. Further, he refuses to end loophole that wastes 100s of hours of ICE time EVERY DAY: “Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the
border.”..."Catch and release" worse than ever:
3/11/2019, "Support for Donald Trump dwindles among ICE officers," Washington Times, Stephen Dinan
"ICE officers who endorsed President Trump in 2016 now say he has failed to follow through on his get-tough promises, saying
catch-and-release of immigrants living illegally in the U.S. is not only
still happening, but
has gone into “overdrive.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers
say they’re being roped into such mundane tasks as opening the doors on vans to release immigrants already caught by Border Patrol agents.
That’s dragging the officers from their usual duties of nabbing
fugitives, or scouring local prisons and jails for immigrant criminals
who lived illegally in the U.S. ready to be deported.
The shell game is all the more “ridiculous,”
the officers said, because
Border Patrol agents could fill out paperwork
and open the doors themselves,
but the agency’s leaders don’t want to be part of catch-and-release.
“Hundreds of man hours are wasted each day at a time of crisis on the
border,” the leaders of the National ICE Council, the union that
represents ICE officers, said
in a letter sent directly to Mr. Trump on
Monday.
The letter was sent just hours before the
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted to
approve Mr. Trump’s pick, Ronald D. Vitiello, to be the new director of
ICE.
Committee Chairman Ron Johnson waved a copy of the ICE Council’s letter during the vote and called the accusations “troubling.”
“We’re going to get to the bottom of this,” he told reporters afterward."
....................................
Added: 4/24/2019, Trump sends 10,000 illegal aliens to US towns and cities every month, 1400 per day, as of April 2019. "Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has exclusively detailed
at Breitbart News three executive actions that Trump administration and
DHS officials could take to immediately end catch and release--including creating additional detention space where immigration court
hearings can be quickly heard."
4/24/2019, "DHS Releases 7K Illegal Aliens into U.S. in Five Days; 1.4K Released Every Day," Breitbart, John Binder
"President Trump’s Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) has released about 7,000 border crossers and illegal
aliens into the interior of the United States in the last five days.
The latest catch and release totals obtained by
Breitbart News revealed that, currently, DHS is releasing about 1,400
border crossers and illegal aliens into the interior of the U.S.
every
day.
Between April 18 to April 22, DHS released about 7,000 border
crossers and illegal aliens into the country.
The catch and release process
often entails federal immigration officials busing border crossers into nearby border cities
and dropping them off with
the promise that they will show up for
their immigration and asylum
hearings, sometimes years later. The overwhelming majority of border
crossers and illegal aliens
are never deported from the country once
they are released into the U.S.
Today, there are anywhere between 11 to 22 million
illegal aliens living across the country — the majority of which are
concentrated in states like California, New York, Florida, Texas, and
Illinois.
Over the past five days, El Paso, Texas, has had to absorb 2,800 of
the 7,000 border crossers and illegal aliens released into the country.
Likewise, San Antonio, Texas, has had to take about 2,200, while about
1,200 were dropped off in Phoenix, Arizona, and 800 in San Diego,
California.
Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach has exclusively detailed
at Breitbart News three executive actions that Trump administration and
DHS officials
could take to immediately end catch and release —
including creating additional detention space
where immigration court
hearings can be quickly heard.
The expanded use of catch and release by the Trump administration has forced
communities like Yuma, Arizona,
to declare a local state of emergency
as the city and county is unable to deal with soaring levels of illegal immigration.
Since December 21, 2018, about 153,000 border crossers and illegal
aliens have been released into the interior of the U.S. This dictates
that DHS is releasing about
38,250 border crossers and illegal aliens
into the country every month
with close to
10,000 released every week and about 1,400 released every day.
At this current trajectory,
by the end of the year [2019], DHS will have
released nearly 460,000 border crossers and illegal aliens into American
communities —
in addition to the projected
half a million illegal aliens who will successfully cross the U.S.-Mexico border this year,
undetected by federal officials."
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