The United States government conducted over 6,000 family separations at the Southwest border between April 19 and August 15, according to a report released by Amnesty International on Thursday.
This figure, which the human rights organization said was provided by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), indicates the government has separated more families than previously acknowledged.
The 74-page report, titled "You Don’t Have Any Rights Here’: Illegal Pushbacks, Arbitrary Detention and Ill-treatment of Asylum-seekers in the United States," said the U.S. is violating international laws in a systematic and cruel effort to prevent and dissuade asylum seekers from entering the country.
“The Trump administration is waging a deliberate campaign of human rights violations against asylum-seekers, in order to broadcast globally that the United States no longer welcomes refugees,” the report said. “Simultaneously, the Trump administration is seeking to dismantle the US asylum system, including by narrowing definitions of who qualifies for protection – in violation of international law.”
In addition to the 6,022 acknowledged separations this year, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it had separated 1,768 families between October 2016 and February 2018, before the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy was enacted. (Three months of that period fell under the presidency of Barack Obama.)
Yet even these figures likely understate the number of separations. Amnesty said that public CBP statistics exclude separations categorized as fraud, according to the report. Government officials, including Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, have said that drug smugglers use children as pawns, as part of an ongoing campaign to suggest that immigrants are criminals.
“Most of these families were separated despite having documentary evidence of their identities and family relationships in their possession at the time that they presented themselves to request asylum at official ports-of-entry. That evidence included passports, national identification cards, birth certificates, and court orders designating legal guardianship, among other official documents,” according to Amnesty.
A government spokesperson denied these claims in a statement to Newsweek, saying that the agency does not and did not have a family separation policy. The spokesperson said that the DHS only separates families when it cannot establish a familial relationship, determines a child may be at risk or the legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution.
The Amnesty report addresses and challenges these statements.
Multiple elements of the government's border policy violate non-refoulement, a binding principle which was established in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Non-refoulement means that refugees “should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom,” and is “now considered a rule of customary international law,” according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
CBP has slowed processing of asylum claims and attempted to prohibit asylum seekers from entering the U.S., Amnesty reported. Tactics leading to queues of asylum-seekers forming on the Mexico side of the border violate the obligation of non-refoulement, while indefinite detention without charge flouts the UN Convention Against Torture, the report said.
The report said CBP communicated many included claims to Amnesty International, but the DHS denied the accuracy of Amnesty's research.
“This is a deeply flawed, inaccurate report authored by an open-borders activist group," DHS spokeswoman Katie Waldman told Newsweek, using a far-right term for the group.
"In fact, many of its so-called 'findings' contradict data provided in federal court by the government, the ACLU, and Judge Sabraw. It is not even remotely credible and should not be treated as such. Individuals looking for an accurate accounting of the Administration’s Zero Tolerance efforts should examine the Ms L court filings which identified 103 children between the ages of 0 and 4 who are potential class members and 2,551 children between the ages of 5 and 17 who are potential class members.”
The DHS watchdog has been harshly critical of the agency's own policies, according to The Washington Post, which obtained an unpublished version of an internal report.
"The investigators describe a poorly coordinated interagency process that left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts," the Post reported earlier this month. "Faced with resource limitations and other challenges, DHS regulated the number of asylum-seekers entering the country through ports of entry at the same time that it encouraged asylum-seekers to come to the ports. During Zero Tolerance, CBP also held alien children separated from their parents for extended periods in facilities intended solely for short-term detention."
hc83 on October 12nd, 2018 at 05:18 UTC »
And the president's response was a gem as well. Basically saying it was a bad look for his administration. So it was an image problem to him. Not about the children crying behind chain link.
PoppinKREAM on October 12nd, 2018 at 03:55 UTC »
President Trump and his administration's indiscriminate, zero tolerance treatment of separating children from families that seek legal asylum in the United States as well as those who illegally enter the country
Over the last few weeks migrant children have been loaded into buses across the country and transported to a barren tent city in the Texas desert. Most children were being detained in Federal facilities where they received formal schooling and regular visits with legal representatives assigned to their immigration cases. Now they've been moved to a barren tent city where there is no formal education and access to legal representation is limited.[1] An Associated Press investigative report discovered that deported parents may lose their children, who had been forcibly removed by the government, to adoption.[2] We recently learned that the U.S. Government had lost track of 1500 children they had detained.[3] And a few months ago we learned that the government had lost track of 20% of toddlers' parents, these toddlers were forcibly removed and detained by the American government while their families sought asylum legally.[4]
While President Trump signed an Executive Order to stop the policy of separating families that his administration started as a deterrence, there was no initial plan to reunite the separated children with their families and there are loopholes within his own EO.[5] Children as young as 3 months are being forcibly removed from their parents care and placed into detention facilities across the United States of America.[6]
Moreover, President Trump and his administration changed their story on their children separation policy over a dozen times before claiming they had ended it.[7] The New York Times fact checks a few of the reasons provided by the administration to justify the child separation policy.[8]
President Trump's rhetoric is incredibly dangerous and is reminiscent of authoritarian leaders who have committed crimes against humanity
The President's rhetoric - his referral to undocumented immigrants as "infesting" the United States is incredibly dangerous and it is not the first time he has alluded to white nationalist talking points. First he tweeted it[9] followed by him saying this as a statement during a speech later in the day.[10] Moreover, former Trump Campaign Chairman Cory Lewandowski went on national television and dehumanized a child with Down Syndrome who had been separated from their family.[11] Many have compared the President's statements to Nazi propaganda.[12]
This administration was not prepared to reunite children that had been forcibly separated from their families by the American government
While President Trump made a spectacle of ending his policy of separating asylum seeking children from their families at the border, hundreds of children remain apart with no solution in sight.[13] President Trump's administration is holding these children as hostages so that their parents can not legally seek asylum in the United States.[14] Immigration officials have been instructed to ask migrant parents if they want to return to their country of origin with or without their children.[15] In a morning tweet storm President Trump reiterated his position of deporting these families without due process.[16]
Moreover, if President Trump cared about securing American borders he should address the fact that visa overstays far outnumber illegal border crossings and have since 2007.[17]
1) New York Times - Migrant Children Moved Under Cover of Darkness to a Texas Tent City
2) Associated Press - AP Investigation: Deported parents may lose kids to adoption
3) New York Times - U.S. Loses Track of Another 1,500 Migrant Children, Investigators Find
4) Think Progress - Trump administration admits they've lost track of roughly 20% of toddlers' parents
5) The Hill - No special effort planned to reunite migrant families already separated: report
6) Michigan Department of Civil Rights - MDCR Statement on President Trump's Zero Tolerance Policy and its Impact on Michigan
7) Washington Post - The Trump administration changed its story on family separation no fewer than 14 times before ending the policy
8) New York Times - Fact-Checking the Trump Administration’s Case for Child Separation at the Border
9) Fox News - Republican pressure intensifies to end family separations at border
10) Fox St. Louis - Trump ramps up rhetoric: Dems want ‘illegal immigrants’ to ‘infest our country’
11) Washington Post - ‘Womp womp’: Corey Lewandowski mocks story of child with Down syndrome separated from parents
12) Times of Israel - Critics say Trump’s talk of immigrants ‘infesting’ US recalls Nazi propaganda
13) The Guardian - Family separation: hundreds of migrant children still not reunited with families in US
14) NBC - New Trump admin order for separated parents: Leave U.S. with kids or without them
15) The Guardian - US officials told to ask migrant parents: will you leave with or without children?
16) Politico - Trump reiterates demand to deport undocumented immigrants, asylum-seekers without due process
17) NBC - Visa Overstays Outnumber Illegal Border Crossings, Trend Expected to Continue
YNot1989 on October 12nd, 2018 at 01:59 UTC »
Good lord these comments are cancer.