The Trump administration is fighting a court ruling forcing it to recognize the rights of children seeking asylum in the United States, the Associated Press (AP) reports. Last month, a federal judge blocked a politically motivated Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order that the administration has used as an excuse to expel thousands of unaccompanied children from the U.S., back to whatever danger they were fleeing from in the first place.
That should have been that. Done. These kids have rights enshrined in U.S. law, whether the administration likes it or not. So honor it. But just one week after Judge Emmet Sullivan’s ruling blocking this unlawful policy and restoring the rights of children seeking protections, the administration has appealed the decision, the report said.
“In its filing Wednesday night, the Justice Department cited the spread of the virus in border communities in Arizona and Texas,” the AP reported. But the massive rise in novel coronavirus cases is happening among people already living in the U.S., meaning we’re the ones actually posing a danger to these children, not the other way around. CDC experts also said there was no valid reason for the health order until the White House bullied the agency into signing it.
It’s hard to overstate the cruelty of what the administration is pursuing in its final weeks in power. Before this policy, kids who came to the U.S. alone were transferred from the custody of border officials to Refugee Resettlement custody under the Department of Health and Human Services Office, to await placement with either a relative already here (sometimes a parent) or a sponsor as they pursue their cases. That’s what’s supposed to happen.
Instead, the government has sought to wall them off at the border and quickly kick them out without any immigration court hearings and in violation of anti-trafficking law. “The children are not even granted the primary registration number by which the Department of Homeland Security tracks all immigrants in its care, making it ‘virtually impossible’ to find them, Efrén C. Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, wrote in a court declaration arguing that the practice is illegal,” Lomi Kriel reported for The Texas Tribune and ProPublica in August.
More than 9,000 of the more than 200,000 expulsions have been of unaccompanied children. Sullivan’s order unfortunately covered only these minors, meaning adults and their children will continue facing immediate expulsion even if Sullivan’s ruling stands.
While President-elect Joe Biden has said he’ll reverse other Trump administration policies like Remain in Mexico (another anti-asylum decision forcing tens of thousands of people to wait out their U.S. immigration court cases in dangerous regions of Mexico), he “has not stated whether he will stop expulsions of immigrants,” the AP reported. But he must.
“There is no basis for allowing this cruel, unprecedented policy to take effect,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt told the AP, “given the harm that these young children would face if sent back and the readily available ways of safely housing the children.”