gallifreyburning:

meret118:

Excerpts:

AC:

The short of it is, we will take sample sizes of numbers and individuals
we’re seeing that are being prosecuted for criminal entry. The majority
of those are free to return to the home country. Vast majority. We
can’t quite know exactly because our sample size is between one hundred
and two hundred individuals. But 90 percent of those who are being
convicted are having their children separated from them. The 10 percent
that aren’t are some mothers who are going with their children to the
detention centers in Karnes and Dilley.

But, for the most part, the ones that I’ve been working with are the
ones that are actually being prosecuted for criminal entry, which is a
pretty new thing for our country—to take first-time asylum seekers who
are here seeking safe refuge, to turn around and charge them with a
criminal offense.

Those parents are finding themselves in adult
detention centers and in a process known as expedited removal, where
many are being deported. And their children, on the other hand, are put
in a completely different legal structure.

They are categorized as
unaccompanied children and thus are being put in place in a federal
agency not with the Department of Homeland Security but with Health and
Human Services. And Health and Human Services has this complicated
structure in place where they’re not viewed as a long-term foster care
system—that’s for very limited numbers—but their general mandate is to
safeguard these children in temporary shelters and then find family
members with whom they can be placed.

So they start with parents, and
then they go to grandparents, and then they go to other immediate family
members, and then they go to acquaintances, people who’ve known the
children, and they’re in that system, but they can’t be released to
their parents because their parents are behind bars.

And we may see more
parents that get out of jail because they pass a “credible fear”
interview, which is the screening done by the asylum office to see who
should be deported quickly, within days or weeks of arrival, and who
should stay here and have an opportunity to present their asylum case
before an immigration judge of the Department of Justice.

So we have a
lot of individuals who are in that credible fear process right now, but
in Houston, once you have a credible fear interview (which will
sometimes take two to three weeks to even set up), those results aren’t
coming out for four to six weeks.

Meanwhile, these parents are just kind
of languishing in these detention centers because of the zero-tolerance
policy. There’s no individual adjudication of whether the parents
should be put on some form of alternative detention program so that they
can be in a position to be reunited with their kid.

TM: So, just so I make sure I understand: the
parents come in and say, “We’re persecuted” or give some reason for
asylum. They come in. And then their child or children are taken away
and they’re in lockup for at least six weeks away from the kids and
often don’t know where the kids are. Is that what’s happening under zero
tolerance?

AC: So the idea of zero tolerance under the stated
policy is that we don’t care why you’re afraid. We don’t care if it’s
religion, political, gangs, anything. For all asylum seekers, you are
going to be put in jail, in a detention center, and you’re going to have
your children taken away from you. That’s the policy. They’re not 100
percent able to implement that because of a lot of reasons, including
just having enough judges on the border. And bed space. There’s a big
logistical problem because this is a new policy.

So the way they get to
that policy of taking the kids away and keeping the adults in detention
centers and the kids in a different federal facility is based on the
legal rationale that we’re going to convict you, and since we’re going
to convict you, you’re going to be in the custody of the U.S. Marshals,
and when that happens, we’re taking your kid away.

So they’re not able
to convict everybody of illegal entry right now just because there
aren’t enough judges on the border right now to hear the number of cases
that come over, and then they say if you have religious persecution or
political persecution or persecution on something that our asylum
definition recognizes, you can fight that case behind bars at an
immigration detention center. And those cases take two, three, four,
five, six months. And what happens to your child isn’t really our
concern. That is, you have made the choice to bring your child over
illegally. And this is what’s going to happen.

TM: Even if they crossed at a legal entry point?

AC: Very few people come to the bridge. Border
Patrol is saying the bridge is closed. When I was last out in McAllen,
people were stacked on the bridge, sleeping there for three, four, ten
nights. They’ve now cleared those individuals from sleeping on the
bridge, but there are hundreds of accounts of asylum seekers, when they
go to the bridge, who are told, “I’m sorry, we’re full today. We can’t
process your case.” So the families go illegally on a raft—I don’t want
to say illegally; they cross without a visa on a raft. Many of them then
look for Border Patrol to turn themselves in, because they know they’re
going to ask for asylum. And under this government theory—you know, in
the past, we’ve had international treaties, right? Statutes which
codified the right of asylum seekers to ask for asylum. Right? Article
31 of the Refugee Convention clearly says that it is improper for any
state to use criminal laws that could deter asylum seekers as long as
that asylum seeker is asking for asylum within a reasonable amount of
time. But our administration is kind of ignoring this longstanding
international and national jurisprudence of basic beliefs to make this
distinction that, if you come to a bridge, we’re not going to prosecute
you, but if you come over the river and then find immigration or are
caught by immigration, we’re prosecuting you.

TM: So if you cross any other way besides the bridge, we’re prosecuting you. But … you can’t cross the bridge.

…

AC: Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.”
And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We
can’t tell you that.” Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re
going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country”
or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear
justification.

In other cases, we see no communication that the parent
knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say,
“I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again
and again. “Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes
off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, “Where
is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long
bath.” And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.”

Sometimes
mothers—I was talking to one mother, and she said, “Don’t take my child
away,” and the child started screaming and vomiting and crying
hysterically, and she asked the officers, “Can I at least have five
minutes to console her?” They said no. In another case, the father said,
“Can I comfort my child? Can I hold him for a few minutes?” The officer
said, “You must let them go, and if you don’t let them go, I will write
you up for an altercation, which will mean that you are the one that
had the additional charges charged against you.” So, threats. So the
father just let the child go.

So it’s a lot of variations. But sometimes
deceit and sometimes direct, just “I’m taking your child away.” Parents
are not getting any information on what their rights are to communicate
to get their child before they are deported, what reunification may
look like.

We spoke to nine parents on this Monday, which was the 11th,
and these were adults in detention centers outside of Houston. They had
been separated from their child between May 23 and May 25, and as of
June 11, not one of them had been able to talk to their child or knew a
phone number that functioned from the detention center director. None of
them had direct information from immigration on where their child was
located. The one number they were given by some government official from
the Department of Homeland Security was a 1-800 number. But from the
phones inside the detention center, they can’t make those calls. We know
there are more parents who are being deported without their child,
without any process or information on how to get their child back.

TM: And so it’s entirely possible that children will be left in the country without any relatives?

AC: Could be, yeah.

TM: And if the child is, say, five years old …?

AC: The child is going through deportation proceedings, so the likelihood that that child is going to be deported is pretty high.

TM: How do they know where to deport the child to, or who the parents are?

AC: How does that child navigate their deportation case without their parent around?

TM: Because a five-year-old doesn’t necessarily know his parents’ information.

AC: In the shelters, they can’t even find the
parents because the kids are just crying inconsolably. They often don’t
know the full legal name of their parents or their date of birth.
They’re not in a position to share a trauma story like what caused the
migration. These kids and parents had no idea. None of the parents I
talked to were expecting to be separated as they faced the process of
asking for asylum.

TM: I would think that there would be something in
place where, when the child is taken, they’d be given a wristband or
something with their information on it?

AC: I think the Department of Homeland Security
gives the kids an alien number. They also give the parents an alien
number and probably have that information. The issue is that the
Department of Homeland Security is not the one caring for the children.
Jurisdiction of that child has moved over to Health and Human Services,
and the Health and Human Services staff has to figure out, where is this
parent? And that’s not easy.

Sometimes the parents are deported. Kids
are in New York and Miami, and we’ve got parents being sent to Tacoma,
Washington, and California. Talk about a mess. And nobody has a right to
an attorney here. These kids don’t get a paid advocate or an ad litem
or a friend of the court. They don’t get a paid attorney to represent
them. Some find that, because there are programs. But it’s not a right.
It’s not universal.

More at the link.

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What’s Really Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families Are Separated?