A U.S. district judge has ordered the Trump administration to stop detaining asylum-seeking children at hotels as part of its Stephen Miller-led policy using the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly expel them. The judge ruled that these children are being deprived of vital protections under a decades-old court settlement and must be transferred to licensed facilities, as is the policy.
The pandemic, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said according to BuzzFeed News, “is no excuse for DHS to skirt the fundamental humanitarian protections that the Flores agreement guarantees for minors in their custody, especially when there is no persuasive evidence that hoteling is safer than licensed facilities.” But while the administration will now be largely blocked from this abhorrent practice of using hotels as baby jails, Miller’s expulsion policy remains, which means children will continue to be quickly—and unlawfully—kicked out.
“According to court documents, as of July 31, at least 660 children have been detained in hotels by ICE, and 577 of them were unaccompanied immigrant children,” BuzzFeed News continued, including Quality Suites, Hampton Inns, Comfort Suites Hotel, Best Western, and Econo Lodge locations in numerous states. Zenen Jaimes Perez of advocacy group Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP) said that under Miller’s policy, “no one is being afforded due process,” calling locations “a black box of information.”
But even if Gee’s order will largely block officials from using hotels as part of this policy, children are still being quickly expelled in violation of anti-trafficking law, many being disappeared without a trace. “Typically, for someone to be formally deported from the US, they would first have to go through the immigration system,” BuzzFeed News said. “However, the CDC's coronavirus order has cut immigrants off from that process.”
The administration had claimed that its policy was going to be temporary, but that was of course a lie. In May, the administration announced the order had been extended indefinitely, saying it would review circumstances on a monthly basis. But then on the same day as Gee’s ruling, the administration published a rule “finalizing the border ‘expulsion’ regulation first put into place on an interim basis in March and enshrining into regulation the right to block refugees,” American Immigration Council’s Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted.
"This regulation makes it clear that the CDC is fully complicit with the Trump administration's use of the COVID-19 pandemic to turn away refugees," he told CBS News.
”Friday's ruling also requires the administration to allow lawyers in the Flores case, as well as independent monitors Gee appointed, to visit facilities where minors processed under the CDC order are held to conduct interviews and oversight,” CBS News continued. This will be key: When an attorney with TCRP tried to verify the wellbeing of asylum-seekers, including children, being detained at a Hampton Inn location in Texas in July, he was blocked and shoved by unidentified men.
“We know that at least two entire FLOORS are being used to detain people before they are illegally expelled,” Perez continued at the time. “Our government is running a black-site in McAllen, TX to circumvent federal and international protections for asylum seekers.”
The administration has already been sued over the expulsion policy by advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union. In what could be the final months of this administration, it’s now rushing to make this despicable policy as permanent as possible—and as difficult as possible for a Biden administration to presumably attempt to overturn. "They're sort of sight unseen at this point, but these are little children, fearing for their lives, fighting for their lives," organization attorney Lee Gelernt told CBS News. "The administration is hoping that everyone doesn't pay attention given everything that's going on.
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