A fight is being waged between President Trump and Democrats over who is to blame for an increase in family separation of immigrants who enter the country illegally.
Trump on Saturday called on Democrats to end a “horrible law” that he says separates children from their parents when they come across the southwest border. “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there [sic] parents once they cross the Border into the U.S,” he said in a Twitter post.
But Democrats and others argue the Trump administration’s own policies are responsible for more family separation.
“Separating children from parents- as a matter of new policy to discourage asylum seekers – is just the latest outrage from this Administration when it comes to immigrants. This is inconsistent with who we say we are as a nation,” said Eric Holder, a former attorney general in the Obama administration, in a tweet Saturday.
Earlier this month, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Homeland Security Department would refer “100 percent of illegal southwest border crossings“ to the Justice Department for prosecution, as arrests at the border have increased in recent months.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed a memo that directs the department to refer all suspected border-crossers to the Justice Department.
A 2008 bipartisan law meant to combat child trafficking, signed by President George W. Bush, requires children apprehended at the border to be classified as unaccompanied minors if their parents are prosecuted and detained for criminal charges.
The law, the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, prohibits the government from quickly deporting children who enter the U.S. illegally and alone if they are not from Mexico or Canada. Under the law, those classified as unaccompanied minors have to be transferred from Homeland Security custody to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Parents, if children came with them, are handled separately.
An agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, the resettlement office provides shelter to the children and finds a guardian to care for them while they await hearings in immigration courts.
Former President Barack Obama cited the law as a barrier when his administration was confronted with a surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the border illegally from Central America in 2014, because he could not quickly deport them.
More prosecutions of people suspected of illegally crossing the border, as the new Trump administration policy demands, would likely make family separations more common.
“This Administration’s immigration policies are outrageous, cruel, and inhumane. Proactively working to break up immigrant families is putting these kids’ lives in danger. We need to put a stop to this,” Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said Saturday on Twitter.
