Nearly all of the 1,001 children who arrived to the southern border by themselves last month were quickly deported by the Trump administration under a Stephen Miller-led public health order condemned by a U.N. agency, and implemented in complete defiance of U.S. asylum law. Of those 1,001 children, only 39 were allowed to remain in the U.S. to continue pursuing their asylum claims, according to government data obtained by CBS News. Just 39.
“Customs and Border Protection carried out nearly 900 expulsions of unaccompanied minors in March and April, but has declined to provide figures for May,” CBS News said. Probably because what officials are doing is a crime in every sense of the word. "There were 1,000 children who came to our border and asked for help and—with 39 exceptions—every single one of them was turned away," Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights policy director Jennifer Nagda told CBS News.
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The deportations are happening under the Miller-led order that has been exploiting the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to go around Congress and continue gutting the asylum system. “Before the worst weeks of the pandemic, the office was getting as many as 77 migrant minors on a given day,” CBS News reported last month. “Since the order's implementation, especially in April, daily referrals from border officials have hovered around the single digits. On some days, the agency has not received any minors.”
This inhumane order was allegedly going to be temporary, but it has since been extended indefinitely. “The order mentions that the circumstances resulting from the coronavirus pandemic would be reviewed every 30 days, but gives no other details on what changes might result in the administration lifting the order,” Roll Call’s Tanvi Misra reported last month. Of course, the administration has deemed everything okay enough to begin holding campaign rallies again, albeit poorly attended due to Trump campaign incompetence.
But when it comes to giving kids looking for safety, red alert, apparently.
This public health order has since been challenged in court, after advocacy groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the administration over its attempt to deport a 16-year-old boy who fled Honduras after witnessing a gang murder, CNN reported earlier this month. The detained teen continues to remain in the U.S. only because a federal judge has temporarily halted his deportation amid the litigation. Advocates are now calling on the court to allow the boy the chance to stay here, and give other kids a chance by halting Miller’s inhumane order.
"He witnessed a gang member murder a young man,” court documents stated according to CBS News. “Gang members then came to the store where his aunt worked, and where J.B.B.C. also helped, threatening him and ordering that the store had to close. Another relative was also beaten by gang members near where J.B.B.C. lived. J.B.B.C was terrified to leave the house after these events, even to go to school. The threat of persecution and torture to J.B.B.C. is imminent and real,” documents stated.
Who knows how many of those nearly 1,000 children more recently blocked from their chance at asylum were also sent back to similar circumstances. Whatever happens to them is now on the hands of this administration. "If those children would have come into our system, large percentages of them would have been found to have claims for protection. They would be eligible for asylum. They would be eligible for protection as trafficking victims," Nagda continued to CBS News. "We are sending children back to traffickers, back to persecutors, back to abusers."