{"id":611469,"date":"2018-08-07T09:26:24","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T15:26:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=611469"},"modified":"2018-08-07T09:26:24","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T15:26:24","slug":"immigration-loophole-trump-bemoaned-returns-after-zero-tolerance-rollback","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2018\/08\/immigration-loophole-trump-bemoaned-returns-after-zero-tolerance-rollback\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigration &#8216;loophole&#8217; Trump bemoaned returns after zero tolerance rollback"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_611472\"  class=\"wp-caption module image alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 771px;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-611472\" src=\"http:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT-771x517.jpg\" alt=\"Silvia Guidel\" width=\"771\" height=\"517\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT-771x517.jpg 771w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT-336x225.jpg 336w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT-768x515.jpg 768w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT-1170x784.jpg 1170w, https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/Sylvia_and_daughters_VGC_TT.jpg 1250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 771px) 100vw, 771px\" \/><p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Ver\u00f3nica G. C\u00e1rdenas \/ for The Texas Tribune<\/p><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Silvia Guidel and her daughters Seily, 7, and twins Nahsliy Nicole and Nahsliy Dariana, 4, from Guatemala, make their way from the McAllen bus station to the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center on July 31.<\/p><\/div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">MCALLEN, Texas \u2014 After fleeing Guatemala, 25-year-old Silvia Guidel crossed the Rio Grande last month on a raft with her three young daughters, walked in the South Texas heat for nearly an hour, and then turned her family in to U.S. Border Patrol agents to seek asylum in America.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Had she arrived six weeks earlier, Guidel, who said she fled violence and extortion in her home country, could well have been separated from her children at an immigrant processing center overseen by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But last Tuesday, Guidel sat in the Greyhound bus station in McAllen with her daughters \u2014 7-year-old Seily and 4-year-old identical twins Nahsliy Dariana and Nahsliy Nicole \u2014 huddled beside her as she recounted her journey to the United States.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Because she crossed the border a month after the Trump administration\u2019s rollback of the &#8220;zero tolerance&#8221; immigration policy, Guidel was on her way to Boston to meet up with an uncle, rather than sitting in detention pining for her daughters.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">&#8220;I heard they were separating families,&#8221; she said, &#8220;but then I didn&#8217;t hear that anymore.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside class=\"module align-left half type-aside\">\n<h3>About this article<\/h3>\n<p>This article originally appeared in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/08\/07\/trump-bemoaned-immigration-loopholes-are-back-after-zero-tolerance\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">The Texas Tribune<\/a>,\u00a0a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">As the United States\u2019 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/07\/12\/migrants-asylum-tougher-guidelines\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">immigration policies continue to shift<\/a>, the procedures that dictated the fates of asylum-seeking families as recently as a few weeks ago already seem like ancient history. A head-spinning sequence of events \u2014 chaotic procedural changes, followed by furious public outcry and abrupt policy reversals \u2014 appears to have put the Trump administration back where it started: running an immigration enforcement system in which migrant families who cross the border illegally are allowed to stay in the country while the government processes their asylum claims.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe administration has backed off,\u201d said Laura Lynch, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. \u201cThe procedures that we\u2019re seeing at the border are those that were previously conducted, prior to the announcement of zero tolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Under the zero-tolerance policy, which the Trump administration announced in May, Border Patrol officers handed migrant parents who crossed the border illegally to the U.S. Department of Justice for prosecution. That process resulted in thousands of family separations, as immigrant children \u2014 who the government cannot detain for longer than 20 days under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Agreement \u2014 were transferred to shelters while their parents went to detention centers.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But in late June, after President Donald Trump issued an executive order ending family separations, Border Patrol Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/25\/us\/politics\/border-officials-suspend-handing-over-migrant-families-to-prosecutors.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">agents had temporarily stopped referring adult migrants with children for prosecution<\/a>. A Border Patrol spokesman confirmed last week that a \u201ctemporary suspension\u201d remains in effect as the agency works with the Justice Department to \u201cmaintain family unity while enforcing prosecution efforts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The administration\u2019s retreat from &#8220;zero tolerance&#8221; was on full display at McAllen&#8217;s bus station last Tuesday as a long line of recently released immigrant parents arrived with tracking devices strapped to their ankles. Among them was Carla Molina, 27, who said she paid smugglers $7,000 to help her and her 6-year-old daughter travel to the border from Honduras.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Molina said she and her daughter were headed to San Antonio, where they plan to stay with friends.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI always trust in God,\u201d she said. \u201cWith God, anything is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Like Molina and Guidel, parents who earlier in the summer would have been separated from their children and prosecuted by the government are instead starting new lives in the United States, reuniting with friends and relatives all over the country. Trump has called this system of \u201ccatch and release\u201d \u2014 a term borrowed from the world of recreational fishing that some immigrant advocates consider dehumanizing \u2014 a <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realdonaldtrump\/status\/964219299211735040?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cdeadly\u201d<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realdonaldtrump\/status\/999373224059265026?lang=en\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cdisgraceful\u201d<\/a> loophole in immigration law.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">And in South Texas, the government\u2019s return to the approach has frustrated immigration hardliners who argue that the practice encourages more illegal immigration.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cI\u2019m saddened to learn, if true, that we\u2019re headed back to a catch-and-release setup,\u201d said Sergio Sanchez, the former chair of the Hidalgo County Republican Party and the host of a radio show called The Wall. \u201cYet again, the slow-churning wheels of our government can\u2019t seem to speed up and properly secure the border.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In his executive order, Trump declared that migrant families should be detained together over the course of their immigration proceedings. But that plan has run into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/06\/21\/trump-says-hell-prosecute-parents-without-splitting-families-will-be-c\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a variety of legal and logistical obstacles<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cUnder current law and legal rulings,&#8221; Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing in June, &#8220;it is not possible for the U.S. government to detain families together during the pendency of their immigration proceedings.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In testimony to Congress last week, Matthew Albence, executive associate director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Flores Agreement \u201cimposes judicially-mandated catch and release\u201d for immigrant parents who cross illegally with their children. An ICE spokesman said the agency does not keep track of how many such asylum-seekers are released into the United States each month.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">In June, the number of apprehensions at the border <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbp.gov\/newsroom\/stats\/sw-border-migration\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">dropped significantly<\/a>, a decrease that the Trump administration hailed as evidence that the zero-tolerance policy has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/dhs-zero-tolerance-policy-large-drop-border-apprehensions\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">deterred migrants from trying to enter the country illegally<\/a>. The July numbers are scheduled to come out later this week.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">But thousands continue to make the long trek north, despite the shifting currents of American immigration policy. Some parents interviewed after crossing the border last month seemed only vaguely aware of the zero-tolerance policy, while others said they&#8217;d heard the U.S. government was separating families and decided to come anyway.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">On a sandy road not far from the river last week, 42-year-old Honduran immigrant Doris Romero dropped her belongings \u2014 a tube of lotion, a hairbrush, a deodorant dispenser \u2014 into a plastic bag and handed them to a Border Patrol officer. Romero traveled to the border with her 14-year-old son Jose and her 6-year-old nephew Ronald after following news coverage of the zero-tolerance policy at home in Honduras.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Fighting back tears, Romero, who plans to travel to Houston after making her asylum claim, said she was relieved when the Trump administration stopped separating families. But even if immigration officials had continued to enforce the policy, Romero said, she would still have come to the United States to escape her home country, where she said her two adult stepsons were killed by drug traffickers.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cHonduras is misery,&#8221; she said. &#8220;There\u2019s no work. There\u2019s no medicine. Every day, it gets worse, and we all have to leave.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><i>Jay Root and <\/i><em>Juan Luis Garc\u00eda Hern\u00e1ndez<\/em><i> contributed to this report.<\/i><script src=\"https:\/\/cdn.texastribune.org\/pixel\/dot.min.29c708b3d0da5d17a725.js\" integrity=\"sha384-8Xwf\/TlQnmHiajg1t3dn8w4qlF1rmV33o5NAQVXYu0T2q3rHV5579zrSmRjh+XnM\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\" data-tt-canonical=\"https:\/\/www.texastribune.org\/2018\/08\/07\/trump-bemoaned-immigration-loopholes-are-back-after-zero-tolerance\/\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A head-spinning sequence of events appears to have put the Trump administration right where it started: allowing migrant families who cross the border illegally to stay in the country while the government processes their asylum claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":611472,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[140],"class_list":["post-611469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-border-and-immigration"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}