- Increase funding to immigration courts, not for lawyers to represent them, but to speed up the deportation process.
- Increase funding to the Governments of Mexico and Central America for crime fighting, via "law enforcement capacity building" and "combatting transnational crime and the threat posed by criminal gangs."
The money will come from Obama's latest 3.7 billion request for supplemental funding.
What about money to help the children and the dismal conditions they are in? I guess DOJ thinks that's not their problem. How about money to speed up the asylum process instead of the deportation process? That would require common sense.
The ACLU filed a class action today on behalf of the thousands of migrant children who are not provided with legal representation or resources to fight deportation proceedings.
The complaint charges the U.S. Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Health and Human Services, Executive Office for Immigration Review, and Office of Refugee Resettlement with violating the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and the Immigration and Nationality Act’s provisions requiring a "full and fair hearing" before an immigration judge. It seeks to require the government to provide children with legal representation in their deportation hearings.
Children should not be left alone in immigration court.
The Complaint is here.
Obama's plan also includes a new detention center. Detention should be a last resort, not a first.
“The underlying approach to such a program should be ‘care’ and not ‘detention,’” Long said, stressing that children under detention are entitled to education, legal aid, counseling and recreation. Alternatives to detention, such as electronic monitoring via ankle bracelets, should be considered,
We should be spending money on the children stuck in the existing unsanitary existing detention facilities. We don't need more prisons.
Here's Joe Biden with his typical response: more funding for law enforcement.
In Honduras, under the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), we will provide $18.5 million to support community policing and law enforcement efforts to confront gangs and other sources of crime.
...The United States also plans to provide $161.5 million this year for CARSI programs that are critical to enabling Central American countries to respond to the region’s most pressing security and governance challenges [translation: crime-fighting].
....Another approximately $96.5 million will go toward peace, security, stabilization, and other related rule of law programs to strengthen immigration, law enforcement, and judicial authorities and promote anti-gang and human rights programs.
We need to help the children who are here now, not throw more money at foreign law enforcement -- which will be as ineffective as the money we've wasted in fighting the war on drugs in these countries. It's just throwing money at the wind. Our foreign aid money should go to reducing poverty and increasing opportunities for the children, not more crime-fighting.
These children are refugees, not criminals. Humanitarian aid for them should be our first priority, not aid for crime-fighting in other countries or for programs to detain and deport more of them faster than ever, with no concern for their legal rights. More from Biden's office:
The Department of Justice and DHS are taking additional steps to enhance enforcement and removal proceedings. We are surging government enforcement resources to increase our capacity to detain individuals and adults who bring their children with them and to handle immigration court hearings – in cases where hearings are necessary – as quickly and efficiently as possible while also while also protecting those who are seeking asylum. That will allow ICE to return unlawful migrants from Central America to their home countries more quickly.
How about prosecuting the border guards who abuse the detained children?
This is not an immigration problem, it's a refugee problem. Children fleeing violence in their home countries should be protected, not sent back home. As one person said, “It is akin to sending a child back into a burning building and locking the door.”
Recommended reading: Un-American Justice: Chilling Scenes from a Southwest Courtroom and The U.S. Government Treats Detained Immigrants Like Slaves
