Leading House Democrats are demanding the Trump administration end its effort to separate detained migrant families amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, telling acting Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf and acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Matthew Albence: “This new ‘binary choice’ policy forces families held in ICE detention centers to make an unimaginable choice: remain detained or separate parents from their children.”
Rather than releasing families as courts have urged, officials are “taking advantage of the pandemic to implement a ‘Sophie’s choice’ for immigrant parents,” one group said. Because of ICE’s cruelty, 180 kids continue to remain detained in horrific migrant family jails. “Millions of families in this country are already suffering immensely from the physical and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic,” House Democrats said. “In these extraordinary times, human suffering need not be compounded by locking up families or instilling fear in the hearts of migrant parents.”
Immigrant rights advocates and attorneys raised alarms last week that federal immigration officials were forcing migrant parents to choose between separating from their child or remaining jailed together indefinitely in inhumane conditions. As advocates noted during that press call, House Democrats write that officials did this without allowing the families to talk to their attorneys.
“ICE appears to have approached parents, including those represented by counsel, with this choice without notifying counsel or any organization that could have provided legal assistance, creating additional confusion and fear among the families,” House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler, Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship Chair Zoe Lofgren, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Joaquin Castro, Congressional Black Caucus Chair Karen Bass, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus Chair Judy Chu, and Congressional Progressive Caucus co-Chairs Pramila Jaypal and Mark Pocan write.
Now caught in the act, ICE officials are in denial mode, offering three statements on their separation attempts, immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez tweeted. Let ICE lie and obfuscate all it wants, but the truth is right there in front of our eyes, and in ICE’s own words, because a report submitted by the agency to a court on the status of detained families lists row after row of “parent does not wish to separate.”
It must be noted that officials like Albence are forcing parents and children to endure conditions he’d never subject his own kids to. It’ll be two years ago this summer that he compared migrant family jails to summer camp, but when pressed by Democratic senators during a hearing that year about whether he’d send his own children to one of these facilities, he refused to answer. He didn’t answer because of course he wouldn’t send his kids to one. Kids do not belong in detention, period, and the fact that these officials wouldn’t send their loved ones to the facilities they keep defending says everything you need to know about the conditions there.
“The Trump administration has seized upon the COVID crisis to implement inhumane immigration policies,” Nadler tweeted. “Their new policy, which forces families held by ICE to choose between remaining detained or being separated from one another, is reprehensible.”