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The Truth about Separating Kids
Topic Started: Jun 18 2018, 11:11 AM (150 Views)
Berton
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The Truth about Separating Kids


The latest furor over Trump immigration policy involves the separation of children from parents at the border.

As usual, the outrage obscures more than it illuminates, so it’s worth walking through what’s happening here.

For the longest time, illegal immigration was driven by single males from Mexico. Over the last decade, the flow has shifted to women, children, and family units from Central America. This poses challenges we haven’t confronted before and has made what once were relatively minor wrinkles in the law loom very large.

The Trump administration isn’t changing the rules that pertain to separating an adult from the child. Those remain the same. Separation happens only if officials find that the adult is falsely claiming to be the child’s parent, or is a threat to the child, or is put into criminal proceedings.

It’s the last that is operative here. The past practice had been to give a free pass to an adult who is part of a family unit. The new Trump policy is to prosecute all adults. The idea is to send a signal that we are serious about our laws and to create a deterrent against re-entry. (Illegal entry is a misdemeanor, illegal re-entry a felony.)

When a migrant is prosecuted for illegal entry, he or she is taken into custody by the U.S. Marshals. In no circumstance anywhere in the U.S. do the marshals care for the children of people they take into custody. The child is taken into the custody of HHS, who cares for them at temporary shelters.

The criminal proceedings are exceptionally short, assuming there is no aggravating factor such as a prior illegal entity or another crime. The migrants generally plead guilty, and they are then sentenced to time served, typically all in the same day, although practices vary along the border. After this, they are returned to the custody of ICE.

If the adult then wants to go home, in keeping with the expedited order of removal that is issued as a matter of course, it’s relatively simple. The adult should be reunited quickly with his or her child, and the family returned home as a unit. In this scenario, there’s only a very brief separation.

Where it becomes much more of an issue is if the adult files an asylum claim. In that scenario, the adults are almost certainly going to be detained longer than the government is allowed to hold their children.

That’s because of something called the Flores Consent Decree from 1997. It says that unaccompanied children can be held only 20 days. A ruling by the Ninth Circuit extended this 20-day limit to children who come as part of family units. So even if we want to hold a family unit together, we are forbidden from doing so.

The clock ticking on the time the government can hold a child will almost always run out before an asylum claim is settled. The migrant is allowed ten days to seek an attorney, and there may be continuances or other complications.

This creates the choice of either releasing the adults and children together into the country pending the ajudication of the asylum claim, or holding the adults and releasing the children. If the adult is held, HHS places the child with a responsible party in the U.S., ideally a relative (migrants are likely to have family and friends here).

Even if Flores didn’t exist, the government would be very constrained in how many family units it can accommodate. ICE has only about 3,000 family spaces in shelters. It is also limited in its overall space at the border, which is overwhelmed by the ongoing influx. This means that — whatever the Trump administration would prefer to do — many adults are still swiftly released.

Why try to hold adults at all? First of all, if an asylum-seeker is detained, it means that the claim goes through the process much more quickly, a couple of months or less rather than years. Second, if an adult is released while the claim is pending, the chances of ever finding that person again once he or she is in the country are dicey, to say the least. It is tantamount to allowing the migrant to live here, no matter what the merits of the case.

A few points about all this:

1) Family units can go home quickly. The option that both honors our laws and keeps family units together is a swift return home after prosecution. But immigrant advocates hate it because they want the migrants to stay in the United States. How you view this question will depend a lot on how you view the motivation of the migrants (and how seriously you take our laws and our border).

2) There’s a better way to claim asylum. Every indication is that the migrant flow to the United States is discretionary. It nearly dried up at the beginning of the Trump administration when migrants believed that they had no chance of getting into the United States. Now, it is going in earnest again because the message got out that, despite the rhetoric, the policy at the border hasn’t changed. This strongly suggests that the flow overwhelmingly consists of economic migrants who would prefer to live in the United States, rather than victims of persecution in their home country who have no option but to get out.

  • Children should not be making this journey that is fraught with peril. But there is now a premium on bringing children because of how we have handled these cases.


Even if a migrant does have a credible fear of persecution, there is a legitimate way to pursue that claim, and it does not involve entering the United States illegally. First, such people should make their asylum claim in the first country where they feel safe, i.e., Mexico or some other country they are traversing to get here. Second, if for some reason they are threatened everywhere but the United States, they should show up at a port of entry and make their claim there rather than crossing the border illegally.

3) There is a significant moral cost to not enforcing the border. There is obviously a moral cost to separating a parent from a child and almost everyone would prefer not to do it. But, under current policy and with the current resources, the only practical alternative is letting family units who show up at the border live in the country for the duration. Not only does this make a mockery of our laws, it creates an incentive for people to keep bringing children with them.

Needless to say, children should not be making this journey that is fraught with peril. But there is now a premium on bringing children because of how we have handled these cases. They are considered chits.

In April, the New York Times reported:

  • Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner.

    Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing.


According to azcentral.com, it is “common to have parents entrust their children to a smuggler as a favor or for profit.”

If someone is determined to come here illegally, the decent and safest thing would be to leave the child at home with a relative and send money back home. Because we favor family units over single adults, we are creating an incentive to do the opposite and use children to cut deals with smugglers.
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4) Congress can fix this. Congress can change the rules so the Flores consent decree will no longer apply, and it can appropriate more money for family shelters at the border. This is an obvious thing to do that would eliminate the tension between enforcing our laws and keeping family units together. The Trump administration is throwing as many resources as it can at the border to expedite the process, and it desperately wants the Flores consent decree reversed. Despite some mixed messages, if the administration had its druthers, family units would be kept together and their cases settled quickly.

The missing piece here is Congress, but little outrage will be directed at it, and probably nothing will be done. And so our perverse system will remain in place and the crisis at the border will rumble on.roblem, says Lowry. It could change the rules so the Flores consent decree will no longer apply and it can appropriate more money for family shelters at the border.

This is what the Trump administration has called for, but Congress doesn’t seem interested. From the Democrats’ perspective, I suppose it’s better to keep the family separation issue alive. It’s win-win for the Dems. Either illegal immigrants get to take advantage of the seeking asylum loophole or the Dems get to rip the president for being “inhumane.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/illegal-immigration-enforcement-separating-kids-at-border/


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icy-woman
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So when your loving cops want to take children away from families to rape and torture them for their own sadistic thrill, they just make up lies about said families not being legal in this country. They have done this, many times. Deputies would swear I am not a resident of the US if it means they could take all I have and destroy my life for their own sick thrills. Oh wait, they did that already too, many times.

Trump's claim to the United States is a false one. This land is supposed to be free for any and all to come into and make a life. Make up a law to justify your abuse of your fellow human. That's what is really going on here. John T Williams, a native American who was murdered by your loving cops has more a claim to this country than Trump does.
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ImaHeadaU
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This administration instituted a “zero-tolerance policy” re. illegal immigration in early April of this year. Previous to that such cases were treated as civil matters but since that time they are now treated as criminal cases which require parents and children to be separated.

Quote:
 
Friday, April 6, 2018

Attorney General Announces Zero-Tolerance Policy for Criminal Illegal Entry

Attorney General Jeff Sessions today notified all U.S. Attorney’s Offices along the Southwest Border of a new “zero-tolerance policy” for offenses under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a), which prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien. The implementation of the Attorney General’s zero-tolerance policy comes as the Department of Homeland Security reported a 203 percent increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018, and a 37 percent increase from February 2018 to March 2018—the largest month-to-month increase since 2011.
U.S. Deparment of Justice

The president's
Quote:
 
administration, however, announced a “zero tolerance” policy in early May under which the Justice Department has tried to prosecute every person who crosses the southwestern border illegally, even if some of them could or should be treated as asylum seekers, as the American Civil Liberties Union has argued.
‘Mothers could not stop crying’: Lawmaker blasts Trump policy after visiting detained immigrants

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Banandangees
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Well, we either enforce our laws or we don't. If a legal citizen mother or father breaks a law, they very well can go to jail, (and they do every day) separating them from their children as was the case with Alice Marie Johnson, a single mother, who served over 20 years for a non-violent offense. She was torn from her children and never met some of her grand children back in the Clinton years, not that Bill Clinton had anything to do with it... but he wasn't the president who pardoned her and saved her from her 5-10-20 year sentence, that would have put her back with her children. Her children had to grow up fending for themselves with a lack of parental guidance. Why should illegal immigrants get "special" treatment for any illegal, nonviolent offense than a U.S. citizen mother (or father). Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

If only Alice Marie Johnson (and her children) would have gotten the journalistic and Democrat Party daily publicity for having her children torn from her as the liberal media and Democrat Party are giving illegal immigrants, then there would "justice" and "equality" under the law for children who have grown up is conditions not much worse than the illegals are fleeing from.

When it comes to breaking the law, and being separated from your children, leaving them parentless, it appears to be less "offensive" if you are an illegal immigrant instead of just an American citizen. Apparently when it comes to "people of color" and the law, the LWOBs are willing to put a greater penalty on those with too much color more so than those with less color. Discrimination of color and citizenry. Racism!
Edited by Banandangees, Jun 18 2018, 03:57 PM.
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Thumper
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Obeying the law would end the whole issue.
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Banandangees
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Thumper
Jun 18 2018, 06:50 PM
Obeying the law would end the whole issue.

You'd think so. But compliance with the law has to be consistent.
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icy-woman
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Not our laws, your laws. My law says that your the criminal for abducting them and taking their children. Now you say "the law" as if it was spoken by God, when it was only spoken by your gods, your Blue ISIS terrorist gods..
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You, as a free, beautiful, independent human being with inalienable rights, own yourself. As a result, you can do what you want with your own body and own the product of your labor. The implication is that it is morally wrong to INITIATE force against someone else OR their property, because to do so is to violate their rights. Therefor, all human interactions should be free of force, fraud, and coercion and people should be free to exercise their rights, limited only by respect for the rights of others.

When you learned "don't hit" and "don't steal," it wasn't "unless you work for the government." When you learned thou shalt not kill, it wasn't "unless your dear leader gives you a gun and a uniform and a one way ticket to the other side of the world." Government is force, an opinion with a gun, and force is a poor substitute for persuasion.

Governments frighten us into thinking we need them, but with knowledge, philosophy, and technology, we are empowering ourselves and each other to have the courage to move past the paradigm of statism and restrain government to only moral uses of force, at least until we replace it with the cooperative, free market solutions, that will soon render it obsolete.
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Berton
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If the parents did not cross the border illegally there would be no problem. To blame their actions on the President is nothing but bias politics.

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Brewster
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Berton
Jun 18 2018, 10:29 PM
If the parents did not cross the border illegally there would be no problem. To blame their actions on the President is nothing but bias politics.
More Berton BS - virtually ALL of those people were trying for legal asylum - the border guards are overstepping their position, with the tacit permission of the Liar-in-Chief.

Try learning a bit, and not just swallowing everything Brietbart and FOX are saying.
Edited by Brewster, Jun 18 2018, 11:02 PM.
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ImaHeadaU
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Until the current administration chose to change the way these cases are dealt with from civil court to criminal court in their "Zero Tolerance" program, these cases did not involve separating children from their parents.

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