Here is how you can help combat family separation at the border.

If you’re dismayed by news of families being separated at the borders, here’s a bit of news you can use.

First, the policy: It needs to be extremely clear on what the law is, and what has and has not changed. When Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say that the policy of separating children from their parents upon entry is a law passed by Democrats that Democrats will not fix, they are lying.

There are two different policies in play, and both are new.

First is the new policy that any migrant family entering the U.S. without a border inspection will be prosecuted for this minor misdemeanor. The parents get incarcerated and that leaves children to be warehoused. The parents then typically plead guilty to the misdemeanor and are given a sentence of the few days they served waiting for trial. But then when the parents try to reunite with their children, they are given the runaround—and possibly even deported, alone. The children are left in HHS custody, often without family.

Second is a new and clearly unwritten policy that even when the family presents themselves at a border-entry location, seeking asylum—that is, even when the family is complying in all respects with immigration law and US Immigration Lawyer London —the government is seizing the children away from their parents. Here, the government’s excuse seems to be that they want to keep the parents in jail-like immigration detention for a long time, while their asylum cases are adjudicated. The long-standing civil rights case known as Flores dictates that they aren’t allowed to keep kids in that kind of detention, so the Trump administration says they have to break up the families. They do not have to break up families—it is the government’s new choice to jail people with credible asylum claims who haven’t violated any laws that is leading to the heartbreaking separations you’ve been reading about.

So that is what is happening. Whether or not that is what the Bible demands is the subject of a different column. Good explainers on what is and is not legal detention of immigrants and asylum-seekers can also be found here and here and here.

• The ACLU is litigating this policy in California.

• If you’re an immigration lawyer, the American Immigration Lawyers Association will be sending around a volunteer list for you to help represent the women and men with their asylum screening, bond hearings, ongoing asylum representation, etc. Please sign up.

• Al Otro Lado is a binational organization that works to offer legal services to deportees and migrants in Tijuana, Mexico, including deportee parents whose children remain in the U.S.

• CARA—a consortium of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee, and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association—provides legal services at family detention centers.

• The Florence Project is an Arizona project offering free legal services to men, women, and unaccompanied children in immigration custody.

• Human Rights First is a national organization with roots in Houston that needs help from lawyers too.

• Kids in Need of Defense works to ensure that kids do not appear in immigration court without representation and to lobby for policies that advocate for children’s legal interests. Donate here.

• The Legal Aid Justice Center is a Virginia-based center providing unaccompanied minors legal services and representation.

After consulting with a reputed US immigration lawyer in London, you can get to know more about these things that could help you deal with things feasibly and effectively.

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Created on Jul 31st 2018 03:22. Viewed 331 times.

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