The American Immigration Council filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with ICE and CBP on October 13, 2017, seeking data on enforcement actions and outcomes since January 2016. With this data, the Council will be able to assess who is being targeted for removal and what the consequences are of the current enforcement framework.
As Congress weighs bills and the Administration considers policies that would result in the long-term detention of families, this backgrounder explains why modifying the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement – which sets national standards regarding the detention, release, and treatment of all children in immigration detention – and expanding family detention cannot be the answer to the Trump administration’s self-created family separation policies.
A letter from U.S. Senators Collins and Flake to DHS Secretary Nielsen and HSS Secretary Azar regarding the separation of immigrant families.
Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, led all Judiciary Committee Democrats sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), calling on him to promptly hold a hearing on the Trump administration’s inhumane family separation policy. Since President Trump announced his “zero-tolerance” policy, nearly 2,500 children – some of them just infants – have been torn away from their families at the border.
The Keep Families Together Act is recently proposed legislation to end the Trump Administration’s policy of separating families at the border. The bill promotes family unity by prohibiting DHS officials from separating children from their parents, except in extraordinary circumstances.
A federal judge ruled that the American Civil Liberties Union’s challenge to the Trump administration’s practice of forcibly separating asylum-seeking parents and young children can proceed.
The Trump administration appears likely to propose a change to longstanding immigration rules that could lead immigrants lawfully in the U.S. and their U.S. citizen children to forgo critical benefits such as health coverage and food assistance.
Zero to Three urges the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to stop family separations, and to ensure babies and their parents remain together in environments that allow them to function as a family.
Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) and colleagues in the Senate, along with Congresswoman Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA 40) and colleagues in the House, introduced the Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections (HELP) for Separated Children Act to protect children separated from their parents by immigration enforcement actions.
Read MoreMany people are aware that immigration agents aren’t supposed to arrest and apprehend people at places like schools, hospitals, and churches. It’s less widely known that early childhood programs are also protected.
Read More
© 2024 CICW.