CALIFORNIA – A ruling set by federal Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California on Monday has opened the way for the Trump administration to once again separate immigrant families detained at the border.
The ruling may very well force detained parents to choose remaining in detention with their children indefinitely, or choose to remain detained while their children are sent to live with a sponsor or in the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS), according to a Vox article.
Can you imagine having to make that decision?
The reality is that the Trump administration can opt to release detained parents, and their children, once they are processed until their scheduled court date –they choose not to. Trump and his administration have made it clear that the practice which they refer to as “Catch and Release” is not a viable option…or an option at all.
It is extremely plausible that parents who have very young children will choose to remain together, even under government detention. Those with older children will most likely opt to send their children to HHS in hopes that they will be picked up by a family member or sponsor not soon after.
The “end chain migration” mission of the administration’s agenda is making the sponsorship option one many are fearing to chose.
Trump and his administration are putting more and more barriers on the sponsorship process. By threatening to also go after undocumented sponsors many potential sponsors are being discouraged to participate for fear of being detained themselves. Meaning longer detention times for children.
It gets worse.
According to an article by the publication Slate, obtained internal documents show that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of HHS, has modeled, and budgeted, for a scenario in which the “Trump administration’s border policies could require the detention of thousands of more immigrant children.”
A direct result of the asministration’s unwillingness to release detained immigrant families on their own recognizance.
According to the documents, even after taking into account Trump’s executive order which ended the separation of migrant families, ORR seems to continue to operate on the assumption that the separation policy is still in effect.
“This envisions having further family separation cases coming to HHS—a lot of them,” stated Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute who from 2013 to 2015 led the Administration for Children and Families—the division of HHS that includes the ORR.
According to Slate, in the obtained documents, there are suggestions that ORR is budgeting on “the possibility that the agency could need as many as 25,400 beds for immigrant minors by the end of the calendar year.” The documents don’t show that ORR officials are aware of any definite increase of family separation in the coming months, even so they are preparing for the “possibility.”
They are not fooling anybody.
To make matters worse, the amount of money that it will take to house this ridiculous number of children is causing a budget shortfall for ORR.
For that, the government has come up with a solution.
Potential costs will be covered by “supplemental appropriations” from Congress, reallocation money from the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, and reallocation of $79 million from programs for refugee resettlement, according to the documents.
This means that millions of taxpayer money will possibly be used to continue the inhumane practice of keeping children detained for long periods of time instead of funding services beneficial for the American people.
The budgeting described in the documents, alongside the now open door to separate more immigrant families are extremely alarming and show that the administration is doing its best to keep these families inhumanely detained until deported. Ensuring that they don’t have any possibility of asylum or staying in the country.
The legal confusion currently present in regards to the future of these innocent immigrant families doesn’t seem to be slowing down the administration’s racist agenda of ending migration of people from Central and South American countries.