US-Mexico border

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden's border challenge: reversing Trumpism – podcast

      by

      The 46th US president took office promising a more welcoming immigration policy. But Republicans are calling a new wave of migrants at the southern border a ‘crisis’ and demanding he addresses it

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      When Joe Biden assumed the presidency earlier this year, he inherited an immigration policy from Donald Trump that was punitive and often criticised as excessively cruel. The 45th US president had unsuccessfully attempted to build a wall across the entire southern border and vilified migrants as “invaders”. The Guardian’s Nina Lakhani tells Anushka Asthana that what she witnessed on the border in Texas was a steady influx of desperate people fleeing poverty, drought and violence. Many were families escaping together to what they hoped would be a new start. But despite the new rhetoric from the White House and a relaxation of some of the harshest measures, migrants are still being detained and many sent straight back across the border. Washington bureau chief David Smith describes the pressure Biden is under to respond to the issue. Democrats have called the situation a challenge and problem. Republicans have rushed to describe it as the first crisis and disaster of the new president’s term. Officials say the number of people caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border is on pace to hit its highest level for 20 years. More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans have taken up the politics of bigotry, putting US democracy at risk | Robert Reich

      by

      Republicans are outraged – outraged! – at the surge of migrants at the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a “crisis … created by the presidential policies of this new administration”. The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs claims, “we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably the most dramatic that I’ve seen at the border in my lifetime.”Donald Trump demands the Biden administration “immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks – they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy.”“Our country is being destroyed!” he adds.In fact, there’s no surge of migrants at the border.US Customs and Border Protection apprehended 28% more migrants from January to February this year than in previous months. But this was largely seasonal. Two years ago, apprehensions increased 31% during the same period. Three years ago, it was about 25% from February to March. Migrants start coming when winter ends and the weather gets a bit warmer, then stop coming in the hotter summer months when the desert is deadly.To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by US policies over the years, that drives migration in the first place.But the “surge” has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear – and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws they say are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting.The core message of the Republican party now consists of liesRepublicans continue to allege – without proof – that the 2020 election was rife with fraudulent ballots, many from undocumented migrants. Over the past six weeks they’ve introduced 250 bills in 43 states designed to make it harder for people to vote – especially the young, the poor, Black people and Hispanic Americans, all of whom are likely to vote for Democrats – by eliminating mail-in ballots, reducing times for voting, decreasing the number of drop-off boxes, demanding proof of citizenship, even making it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.To stop this, Democrats are trying to enact a sweeping voting rights bill, the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering and keeps dark money out of elections. It passed the House but Republicans in the Senate are fighting it with more lies.On Wednesday, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed the new bill would register millions of undocumented migrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots too.The core message of the Republican party now consists of lies about a “crisis” of violent migrants crossing the border, lies that they’re voting illegally, and blatantly anti-democratic demands voting be restricted to counter it.The party that once championed lower taxes, smaller government, states’ rights and a strong national defense now has more in common with anti-democratic regimes and racist-nationalist political movements around the world than with America’s avowed ideals of democracy, rule of law and human rights.Donald Trump isn’t single-handedly responsible for this, but he demonstrated to the GOP the political potency of bigotry and the GOP has taken him up on it.This transformation in one of America’s two eminent political parties has shocking implications, not just for the future of American democracy but for the future of democracy everywhere.“I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy?” Joe Biden opined at his news conference on Thursday.In his maiden speech at the state department on 4 March, Antony Blinken conceded that the erosion of democracy around the world is “also happening here in the United States”.The secretary of state didn’t explicitly talk about the Republican party, but there was no mistaking his subject.“When democracies are weak … they become more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside,” he warned.People around the world witnessing the fragility of American democracy “want to see whether our democracy is resilient, whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy in defending democracy around the world for years to come.”That resilience and legitimacy will depend in large part on whether Republicans or Democrats prevail on voting rights.Not since the years leading up to the civil war has the clash between the nation’s two major parties so clearly defined the core challenge facing American democracy. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Republicans and Democrats send dueling delegations to US border

      by

      Republicans and Democrats sent dueling delegations to the southern US border on Friday, in an attempt to frame perceptions of the Biden administration’s immigration policy amid an uptick in recent weeks in border crossings by undocumented migrants.A group of Republican senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas presented their trip as an exposé of dire circumstances, with Cruz sharing video of himself on Thursday night standing in darkness next to the Rio Grande river and falsely warning about a “flood” of human smuggling.A group of Democratic members of the House of Representatives led by Joaquín Castro of Texas described a different vulnerability at the border, that of unaccompanied children held by the US government.The Democratic delegation planned on Friday to visit children at a Department of Health and Human Services facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas, to ensure “that they’re treated humanely”, Castro said.Beto O’Rourke, the former representative from El Paso, Texas, blasted Cruz on Twitter on Friday for what O’Rourke implied was a political charade designed to slow the momentum of Joe Biden, who has presided over a successful coronavirus vaccine rollout, signed an $1.9tn economic relief package and announced plans for a similar big spend on infrastructure.“The truth is, the number of individual asylum seekers and immigrants seeking to come to this country is the SAME or LOWER than it was in 2019 when [Donald] Trump was President (and you were, apparently, Senator),” O’Rourke sniped at Cruz. “This isn’t any more of a crisis today than it was then.”After two election cycles in which the former president’s strategy of fearmongering about supposed pressure on the border produced a Republican rout in midterm elections and then his own defeat, Cruz and colleagues returned to the strategy once again with a two-day, high-profile tour of border areas that included almost one quarter of the party’s senators.One member of the delegation, Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma, tweeted video from a visibly crowded border detention facility on Friday, claiming the facility was holding almost 10 times its intended capacity.Cruz was trying on Friday to get the hashtag “#Bidenbordercrisis” going on Twitter.Biden said in a news conference on Thursday: “I’m ready to work with any Republican who wants to help solve the problem. Or make the situation better.”But the president sought to draw a sharp line between his border policies and those of his predecessor.“The idea that I’m going to say, which I would never do, ‘If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border, we’re just going to let him starve to death and stay on the other side’ – no previous administration did that either, except Trump,” Biden said. “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do it.”Trump enacted a policy of family separation at the border, taking more than 5,500 children from their parents and then failing to keep track of the separated families, ultimately stranding hundreds of children whose parents could not be found, according to court documents.Biden has placed Kamala Harris in charge of addressing the situation on the border. In an interview earlier this week the vice-president said that she and Biden would “absolutely” visit the border in person.“They should all be going back. All be going back,” Biden said of people crossing the border. “The only people we are not going to leave sitting there on the other side of the Rio Grande with no help are children.”Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said a nine-year-old child from Mexico died last week while trying to reach the US border.“US border patrol agents assigned to Del Rio sector’s marine unit rescued two migrants attempting to cross the Rio Grande, March 20,” the agency said in a statement released on Thursday. “US border patrol marine unit agents responded to assist three individuals stranded on an island on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River.”Border agents administered first aid to the three migrants. Two of them, a woman from Guatemala and her three-year-old child, regained consciousness, but the third, a child from Mexico, did not and was later pronounced dead by medical officials.“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of this small child,” the Del Rio sector chief patrol agent, Austin L Skero II, said in the statement.A member of the Democratic border delegation, Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, spotlighted the plight of children held in US border detention facilities.“Heading to the southern border with 7 year old Jakelin Caal on my mind,” Tlaib tweeted on Friday morning. “She died in detention, in our care, in 2018. I want to make sure no child dies like this, with conditions that we control.” More

    • 125 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      Mayorkas blames Trump for border woes as Republicans attack Biden

      by

      The Biden administration is facing mounting pressure over a surge of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the US, with the numbers seeking asylum at a 20-year high that is placing federal facilities and shelters under immense strain.The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, took to the political talk show circuit on Sunday to press the administration’s case that it is doing all it can. He continued to refer to the problem as a “challenge” not a “crisis”, attempting to put blame squarely on the previous incumbent of the White House, Donald Trump.“It is taking time and it is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration,” Mayorkas told CNN’s State of the Union. “There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration.”On ABC’s This Week, Mayorkas highlighted the tougher aspects of Joe Biden’s border policy, stressing that the administration was still expelling families and single adults under a regulation known as Title 42. He insisted largely Central American migrants arriving in increasing numbers were being given a clear message: “Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure.”But prominent Republicans have seized on the border difficulties as an opportunity to attack Biden for being soft on immigration.There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration“This is a crisis,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, has said. “I don’t care what the administration wants to call it – it is a crisis.”Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas and ardent Trump loyalist, lambasted the secretary’s position as “nonsense”.In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cotton characterized the Biden administration’s stance as “basically saying the United States will not secure the border, and that’s a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world [saying] the border is wide open”.He went on to make lurid allegations, backed up with no evidence, that the focus on unaccompanied children at the border was allowing criminals smuggling fentanyl and other drugs as well as people on “terrorist watch lists” to slip into the US undetected.Political steam over border affairs has been building for two months. In one of his first acts as president, Biden scrapped Trump’s hardline policy of sending unaccompanied children seeking asylum back to Mexico.Under Biden’s guidelines, unaccompanied minors were exempted from the Title 42 rules and shielded from expulsion. That was deemed in line with the president’s pledge to achieve a “fair, safe and orderly” immigration system.On Sunday, Mayorkas said the new approach addressed the humanitarian needs of migrant children “in a way that reflects our values and principles as a country”. But in the past few weeks, the numbers of minors seeking asylum has grown so rapidly that it has outpaced capacity to process the children in line with immigration laws.He is basically saying the United States will not secure the borderMore than 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children are being detained in Custom and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Texas and Arizona. As a backlog of cases has built up, more than 500 have been kept in custody for more than 10 days, well beyond the 72 hours allowed under immigration law.There have been reports of overcrowding and harsh conditions in federal facilities in Texas. The Associated Press reported that some children were said by immigration lawyers to be sleeping on the floor after bedding ran out.The government has tried to move as many children as possible into shelters run by the US Refugee Office, but they in turn have become stressed. There are now more than 9,500 children in shelters and short-term housing along the border. Non-governmental groups working with migrants and refugees have been forced to scramble to deal with the sudden demand for shelter.As the administration struggles to keep a grip on events, it is also coming under criticism from Republicans and media outlets for refusing to allow reporters inside the beleaguered CBP facilities where children are being held. On Friday, Mayorkas visited El Paso in Texas with a bipartisan congressional delegation. Reporters were not allowed to follow them.The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, called the move “outrageous and unacceptable”. In a tweet, he said: “No press. No cameras. What is Biden hiding?”Quizzed by Fox News Sunday about the apparent lack of accountability, despite Biden’s promise to bring “trust and transparency” back to public affairs, Mayorkas said the administration was “working on providing access” to border patrol stations.But he added: “First things first – we are focused on operations and executing our plans.”While the political heat is rising at the border, moves are under way in Washington to try and find a longer-term fix to the age-old immigration conundrum. Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would give “Dreamers”, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, a pathway to citizenship.The legislation has an uncertain future in the Senate, given its 50-50 split and the need to reach 60 votes to pass most major legislation.Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois who has introduced a similar Dream Act to the Senate five times in the past 20 years, told CNN that he thought he was close to securing the necessary 60 votes. He also decried the current debate about whether there was a “crisis” or “challenge” at the border.“We need to address our immigration laws in this country that are broken,” he said. “What you see at the border is one piece of evidence of that, but there’s much more.” More

    • 200 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Is there a crisis at the border?: a look at both sides of the immigration argument

      by

      Along the winding road which follows the Rio Grande west from Mission, Texas, dozens of armed border patrol agents, state troopers, soldiers, and state and local police are dotted about to catch undocumented migrants entering the country from Mexico.This is a so-called hotspot for irregular migration – folks crossing the border river without permission to enter the US – in what the Republican party and anti-immigrant activists are calling a crisis at the border. During one afternoon this week, there were more law enforcement vehicles cruising along this dusty 15-mile stretch towards Los Ebanos, a tiny border community connected to Mexico by a hand operated cable ferry, than there was local traffic.For a couple of hours nothing much happens, until agents chase down a group – six men, and one woman – trying to hide in the dry vegetation.They are handcuffed and processed on the side of the road, each giving their name, age and country of origin to a bilingual border patrol agent, before placing personal belongings – wallet, jewellery and phone – into individual plastic bags. The sun is piercing; the migrants look exhausted.Christian, a lanky 20-year-old from Santa Bárbara,Honduras, seems utterly bewildered by what’s just gone down. His family’s crops were destroyed last November when two deadly hurricanes – Eta and Iota – struck within two weeks of each other. The land was flooded for two months, leaving them no harvest and unable to prepare for next season. “There are no jobs, and we have no money or food,” he said, shaking his head.Christian is among a rapidly rising number of climate refugees from Central America – one of the most vulnerable regions in the world to the impacts of global heating.Emerson, 25, a member of the indigenous Maya Q’eqchi community from Puerto Barrios in Izabal, Guatemala, left behind his wife and two young daughters, hoping to find work. “I’m a machinery mechanic, but the work went down with the pandemic and then things got much worse with Hurricane Eta.”Ingrid, one of two Salvadorans, said she’s 18 but looks much younger. She’s wearing two plastic wristbands – one red, the other white – which reports suggest are used by coyotes (smugglers or guides) to indicate payments had been made to organized crime groups who control the border.Ingrid lived with her uncle in Ilopango, a sprawling town on the outskirts of the Salvadoran capital with high levels of gang violence and police brutality, but said she’d come looking for work and a better life after the pandemic left them struggling to make ends meet. Covid has deepened poverty and hunger across Central America and Mexico, and governments have failed to provide adequate, if any, relief.The migrants were given disposable face masks before being searched and loaded into a green and white border patrol van. They will be expelled; some of them will undoubtedly try to cross again.The border patrol agents won’t answer any questions, but one said to his colleagues: “This is a good day’s work.” Another said he hoped we would give them good publicity.After four years of racist, chaotic, anti-immigration policies by the Trump administration – as well as growing desperation fuelled by the pandemic and extreme climate events – the number of people seeking to enter the US is rising.But advocates in the Rio Grande Valley, where undocumented migrants have long been relied upon for cheap farm labour, reject incendiary claims that the numbers are overwhelming.“Migration goes up and down, that’s the reality of the border. Biden has different values and has given people hope, but there’s no border crisis, to say so is political manipulation,” said Ramona Casas, director of the migrant advocacy group Arise. “We need to address the root causes and transform the broken immigration system, not more militarization.”The current uptick started before Biden’s election, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) figures.Jenn Budd, a former senior border patrol agent turned whistleblower, said: “The only crisis at the border is the children, which the administration is trying to deal with, anything else is simply not true and an attempt to play politics, make Biden look bad and ensure the money keeps flowing to the border security industry.”In 2000, a total of 9,212 border patrol agents detained an average of almost 137,000 undocumented migrants per month on the southern border. In the 2021 fiscal year until February, the average was just over 76,000 per month, but the number of agents is more than double compared to 2000.Earlier this month, the Texas governor Greg Abbott deployed state troopers and the national guard to the border after claiming, without evidence, that illegal immigrants were spreading the coronavirus.“The Biden administration is recklessly releasing hundreds of illegal immigrants who have Covid into Texas communities,” said Abbott in a tweet on 3 March.But illegal or undocumented migrants are not being released into the US. The two groups being allowed in are some existing asylum seekers, thanks to the repeal of Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, and some new arrivals presenting at legal ports of entry, including unaccompanied children and young families, who have been permitted to remain in the country pending asylum court hearings. In Texas, everyone else continues to be turned back, say advocates.Abbott’s unsubstantiated Covid claims came shortly after he announced plans to end the state mask mandate and ordered businesses to reopen at 100% capacity. Texas has one of the slowest vaccination rates in the country. The White House has called out Abbott for refusing federal funds to pay for Covid mitigation measures for migrants.Last week, speaking at a press conference in Mission, Abbott said he’d seen people crossing the river illegally during an aerial tour of the area. “There is a crisis on the Texas border right now with the overwhelming number of people who are coming across the border. This crisis is a result of President Biden’s open border policies,” he said.A couple of days later CNN and Breitbart reported a story after coming across an alleged human trafficking incident within minutes of setting off on the river, from a launchpad behind the wall south-east of Mission where access is controlled by border patrol, which multiple advocates claim was staged to fuel rightwing propaganda.In the video, a man wearing a black balaclava is seen bringing a handful of migrants wearing facemasks and life vests across the river in a raft, with scores more lined up on the Mexican side, waiting to cross. The so-called smuggler then sets off to bring over another load.In general, smugglers try to blend in and so do not cover their faces, in order to pass off as a migrant and avoid trafficking charges if caught. The Guardian travelled 20 miles along the river, which is full of sensors, cameras, and other tracking devices, as well as regular patrols on the levy and river, making it unlikely that such a large group of people could go undetected. The Guardian did not see any people crossing the river.In downtown McAllen, the biggest city in the Rio Grande Valley, a young female volunteer gripping a clipboard leads a small group of Central American families from the Covid rapid testing site to the Catholic Charities respite center where they can shower, rest, make phone calls and eat a modest meal before heading to be with relatives with whom they should stay until their asylum case is ruled on by an immigration court.CBP has released a hundred or more new arrivals every day – all families with children under the age of six seeking asylum at a port of entry – for the past few weeks compared to just a handful before Biden took office.The largest Rio Grande Valley detention center is closed for remodeling, which along with Covid restrictions has reduced capacity and partially explains the transfer of unaccompanied children to other sectors and the release of families into the care of relatives.The rise is significant but manageable, according to Norma Pimentel, director of the respite center.On arrival, the exhausted families are ushered into large white tents erected opposite the bustling bus terminal, where everyone is tested for Covid – a service run by local health officials. Anyone who tests positive must quarantine in a local hotel for two weeks.“There’s a pandemic, so of course some migrants will have Covid, that’s why we’re testing them to keep everyone safe. If the governor cares about the community, why did he refuse federal funds? He’s not interested in solving the problem, he’d rather spend money militarizing our communities and creating an illusion of war,” said Pimentel. “Everyone should be given a fair chance to claim asylum safely, but we need to address the root causes, we will never fix this at the border.”CBP did not respond to questions. As the partisan finger pointing intensifies, desperate people try to change their lives.On a bench in front of the respite center, Alicia Barrios, 31, from Guatemala City, cannot hold back the tears. Barrios, who is seven months pregnant, arrived at the border last week with her husband Nelson Gonzales, 27, and four-year-old daughter Brittany, after a gruelling, four-week overland journey through Mexico. Both have lost weight, and Barrios recalls long nights sleeping in the open air, comforting her daughter as she cried because she was hungry and cold.In Guatemala, they barely had enough to eat over the past year as the economy collapsed and a strict curfew made many odd jobs impossible; Barrios hasn’t had any antenatal care as the hospitals are overwhelmed. She’s waiting for her brother in Houston to send them bus fare, and doesn’t yet understand the lengthy legal process which lies ahead.“The journey was very hard, but we don’t want our children to suffer like we did. I’m so grateful that we made it.” More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘The border is closed’: US deters adults but allows processing for child migrants

      by

      Joe Biden’s homeland security secretary said on Tuesday that even as the US processes a growing number of unaccompanied child migrants at the US-Mexico border, the country remains closed to most asylum seekers.“Now is not the time to come to the border,” Alejandro Mayorkas said.US border patrol officials encountered more than 15,000 children traveling without adults in January and February and officials have warned the numbers continue to grow in the first weeks of March. The arrivals threaten to overwhelm stretched federal agencies, putting children at risk, though Mayorkas told ABC News it was a challenge his department could handle.“What we are doing is addressing young children who come to the border to make claims under the humanitarian laws established years and years ago and we are building capacity to address the needs of children when they arrive,” Mayorkas said. “But we are also, and critically, sending an important message that now is not the time to come to the border.”Mayorkas said the border was not permanently closed to adults and families, but urged people to wait before approaching it.“Give us the time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled in the prior administration,” he said.The secretary also issued a lengthy statement, warning that the US was on pace to encounter more individuals at the border with Mexico than it had in the past 20 years.His projection did not reflect a record number of people crossing the border, however, because it only included people apprehended by US border patrol – not those who cross without getting caught. That group has shrunk dramatically since the early 2000s.“This is not new,” Mayorkas said. “We have experienced migration surges before – in 2019, 2014 and before then as well.”He also acknowledged several factors pushing people north, including poverty, violence, corruption and two damaging hurricanes which hit Honduras in November.The measured tone from the Biden administration is a marked departure from US policy under Donald Trump, when migrants were routinely vilified. Advocates have said this tone shift is an important step in itself but they are also watching closely to see if Biden administration acts reflect its promise of “a safe, legal and orderly immigration system”.A first test for the administration is how it processes children who make the dangerous journey to the US without adults.After encountering border patrol agents, unaccompanied children are supposed to be moved to US health department custody within 72 hours. The health department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement attempts to place children into homes with sponsors in the US, usually close relatives, while their cases are assessed.In recent weeks, thousands of unaccompanied children have been held in border patrol facilities beyond the three-day limit, prompting concerns for their health and welfare.Lawyers who spoke with more than a dozen children held at a border patrol facility in Texas last week told the Associated Press some said they had been there for more than a week. Some children reported being held in packed conditions, sleeping on the floor and not being able to shower for five days, the lawyers said.To cope with the increase, the Biden administration has opened temporary facilities to house children, deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) and changed rules to move to children to the custody of a sponsor.Mayorkas said the administration was also attempting to rebuild the immigration system after the Trump administration shrank legal pathways to the US.“The system was gutted, facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers,” Mayorkas said. “We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.”Trump’s immigration policy was shaped by adviser Stephen Miller, who has endorsed white supremacist views. On his watch, the Trump administration made more than 1,000 changes to US policy, according to the Immigration Policy Tracking Project.These changes included a March 2020 rule which effectively stopped asylum processing under coronavirus guidelines. As a result, more than 13,000 children traveling alone were expelled in the fiscal year to 30 September according to the American Civil Liberties Union.Overall, there were 197,000 expulsions in that time, a count including repeated crossings, or recidivism, which jumped from 7% in 2019 to 37% in 2020.Biden stopped using the rule, Title 42, to block unaccompanied children from seeking asylum. But it is still being used to expel adults and families. Advocates are critical of this decision, saying the public health justification is flimsy at best, but the administration has defended the Trump-era rule.At a White House briefing last week, the US southern border coordinator, Roberta Jacobson, spoke in Spanish and English.“La frontera está cerrada,” she said. “The border is closed.” More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Omar urges end to prison contracts to fix 'abuse-ridden' immigration detention system

      by

      Ilhan Omar has called on the Biden administration to phase out immigration detention contracts between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and local jails and prisons.In a letter to Susan Rice, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Minnesota Democrat said the contracts perpetuated mass incarceration.“In order to truly sever the financial incentives causing the expansion of an unnecessary and abuse-ridden system of mass incarceration, we urge you to end contracts between the federal government and localities for the purposes of immigration detention,” Omar wrote, in a letter also signed by other Democratic members of Congress.Immigration activists have for years targeted such contracts at local levels.In New Jersey, lawmakers are considering proposals that would prevent counties, municipalities and private prison operators from entering into such contracts or renewing or extending those already in effect. In California in 2019 the governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a law blocking the state from entering into or renewing contracts with private prison companies.Biden is under pressure to address the sprawling US immigration detention system, the largest in the world and rampant with allegations of abuse.More than 70 members of Congress, including Omar, have called on Biden to phase out the use of private prisons for immigration detention. Biden signed an executive order to do so at justice department facilities, but not at facilities which detain migrants.Biden’s administration is also attempting to respond to an increase in asylum-seeking children at the southern border. A near-record 9,457 unaccompanied children were taken into US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody in February, according to the agency, the most since May 2019.In recent weeks, thousands of children have stayed in CBP facilities beyond the 72-hour legal limit, after which they are supposed to be moved to the care of the US health department.A CBP tent facility in Donna, some 165 miles south of Dallas, is holding more than 1,000 children and teenagers, some as young as four. Lawyers who inspect immigrant detention facilities have said they have interviewed children who reported being held in packed conditions, some sleeping on the floor, others not able to shower for five days.Biden is using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), best known for responding to natural disasters, to manage and care for the children.Later on Monday, it was reported that the administration plans to use a downtown Dallas convention center to hold up to 3,000 immigrant teenagers.The Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center will be used for up to 90 days beginning as early as this week, according to written notification sent to members of the Dallas city council on Monday and obtained by the Associated Press. Federal agencies will use the facility to house boys ages 15 to 17, according to the memo, which described the soon-to-open site as a “decompression center”. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Surge in migrants seeking to cross Mexico border poses challenge for Biden

      by

      The number of migrant children and families seeking to cross the US-Mexico border has increased to levels not seen since before the coronavirus pandemic – a challenge for Joe Biden as he works to undo the hardline immigration policies of predecessor Donald Trump.Statistics released Wednesday by US customs and border protection (CBP) showed the number of children and families increased by more than 100% between January and February.Children crossing by themselves rose 60% to more than 9,400, forcing the government to look for new places to hold them temporarily.Roberta Jacobson, the administration’s coordinator for the southern border and a former ambassador to Mexico, joined the White House press briefing on Wednesday.She said the president is committed to building a fair immigration system, but cannot undo the damage of the Trump administration “overnight”.She sidestepped a question about whether the situation at the border qualifies as a crisis.“Whatever you call it wouldn’t change what we’re doing,” Jacobson said.The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, previously said he does not consider the situation to be a crisis, which sparked intense criticism among Republicans, including Trump.But Jacobson said: “Surges tend to respond to hope. There was a hope for a more humane policy.”She also argued that the election of Biden allowed human smugglers to spread disinformation about migrants’ ability to enter the US immediately.“The border is not open,” Jacobson said and urged undocumented people not to make the dangerous journey.The Biden administration is turning back nearly all single adults, who make up the majority of border-crossers, under a public health order imposed by Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.And the administration is temporarily holding children and families, mostly from Central America, in government and private facilities for several days while it evaluates claims for asylum or determines if they have any other legal right to stay in the US.Republicans have argued that migrants are drawn by incentives such as the immigration bill backed by Biden and many Democrats that would offer a path to citizenship for millions of people living unlawfully in the US.“We’re seeing a surge of unaccompanied children coming across the border. Why? Joe Biden promised amnesty,” Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, tweeted.There were nearly 29,000 family units or unaccompanied minors in February. The last time it was higher was in October 2019.Biden officials have faced mounting questions about the temporary detention of migrant families, an issue that the two previous presidents had to deal with because of the instability in the region.Jacobson said the administration is asking Congress for $4bn for targeted aid to Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala.“Only by addressing those root causes can we break the cycle of desperation and provide hope for families who clearly would prefer to stay in their countries and provide a better future for their children,” she told reporters at the White House.Jacobson said the US is also restoring a program, ended under Trump, that reunited children in the three Central American countries with parents who are legal residents in the United States.The Department of Homeland Security has also begun processing the asylum claims of thousands of people who were forced by the Trump administration to stay in Mexico, often in dangerous conditions for a long time, for a decision on their case.A migrant camp that formed in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, in south-east Texas, recently was emptied of migrants as they were allowed into the US to process their immigration or asylum claims. More