A Trump appointed federal judge on Wednesday again temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting a 16-year-old Honduran boy under a Stephen Miller-led public health order, BuzzFeed News reports. Officials had tried to quickly deport the boy, who fled to the U.S. after witnessing a gang murder, but the judge “concluded Wednesday that the boy was at risk of being harmed if returned to Honduras,” CNN said.
The teen is at the center of a recent lawsuit over the administration’s inhumane policy, which in reality uses the novel coronavirus pandemic to stomp on U.S. asylum protections. “Administration officials have said they are following public health orders designed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus in the US, but advocates like the ACLU argues the government is using the health orders as an excuse to violate federal laws that govern the processing of unaccompanied minors,” BuzzFeed News continued.
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Close to 2,000 migrant children may have already been deported under the order in the past several months, according to official and unofficial data. “In March and April, the most recent period for which data was available, 915 young migrants were expelled shortly after reaching the American border,” The New York Times reported last month. CBS News reported that nearly 1,000 children were deported the following month, with only 39 kids allowed to continue to pursue their asylum claims in the U.S.
"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.
Advocacy groups including the ACLU launched the first lawsuit challenging the policy earlier this month, seeking a halt of the teen’s deportation and a stop to the inhumane and wrongful deportation of many other kids. “Unaccompanied migrant children have been afforded certain protections under US law, but new border measures have undercut those protections, attorneys argue in the complaint,” CNN reported.
“The judge agreed with the plaintiff's central argument that the CDC had likely exceeded its authority in ordering the expulsion of children and asylum seekers under the public health laws,” the ACLU said in a statement received by Daily Kos, saying litigation around the suit continues.
The suit comes as the administration is also seeking to implement other policies further gutting the asylum system, and in complete defiance of Congress. DHS Watch said earlier this month it has now counted over 30 actions the administration has taken since 2017 to steadily chip away at asylum law to the point that the U.S. saw “just two people being granted asylum over an-almost two month period.” Now suffering are those among the most vulnerable, including thousands of children being deported back to danger by the United States.
“Today’s ruling was an important affirmation that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore longstanding humanitarian safeguards designed to protect children fleeing persecution,” Oxfam America humanitarian policy lead Noah Gottschalk said in the statement. “We hope this marks the beginning of a renewed respect for America's obligations towards asylum seekers.”