Fine Print Trump's Executive Order to Stop Separating Families
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President Trump signed an executive social club on Midweek ending his administration's policy of separating migrant children from their parents who were detained every bit they attempted to enter the U.S. illegally.
The activeness came after a firestorm of protest from administration opponents and allies, reacting to pictures and sounds of young children traumatized by their separation from their parents at the hands of U.South. authorities.
"So we're going to have strong — very stiff borders, just we're going to keep the families together. I didn't like the sight or the feeling of families being separated," said Trump.
He is, in result, ordering family separation to be replaced with the detention of whole families together, even later previously arguing that "y'all tin't do it by executive order."
What does the executive order say?
The president says his administration is trying to residuum rigorous enforcement of U.S. immigration laws and pursue its policy of maintaining family unity. He says his administration was put "in the position of separating alien families to effectively enforce the police force" because of "Congress'south failure to human action" and "court orders."
What court orders is he talking virtually?
The administration has consistently said it was forced to separate families because of the conclusion of a court example known as "the Flores Settlement." That settlement, reached in 1997, required the government to limit the time it keeps unaccompanied minors in detention and to continue them in the to the lowest degree restrictive setting possible. The settlement was afterward modified to say that children should not be held longer than 20 days.
Trump's executive social club directs the attorney general to promptly file a request with U.Due south. District Judge Dolly Gee in the Central District of California to modify the Flores Settlement and allow detained migrant families to be held together "throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings ... or other immigration proceedings."
What else did Trump order?
The president directed Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to maintain custody of detained families during criminal proceedings and as their asylum claims are adjudicated. Too, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and the heads of other agencies are ordered to discover or construct facilities to house the detained families. Finally, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is directed to prioritize the adjudication of cases involving detained families.
What does the executive order hateful for House Republican legislation?
Subsequently visiting Capitol Hill on Tuesday night to rally a broad immigration pecker, Trump said Wed that he however hopes that Congress will act.
"We will be going through Congress. We're working on a much more comprehensive bill," Trump said before signing the order. But as The Washington Postal service reports, few people are predicting that either House measure — either a conservative version or a more moderate one — will pass.
So what happens to the children who accept been separated from their parents?
It is non immediately clear whether, or when, detained children will be reunited with their parents.
"It is nevertheless very early and we are pending further guidance on the matter," said Brian Marriott, senior director of communications at the Administration for Children and Families, a division of Health and Human Services.
"Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors in HHS/[Office of Refugee Resettlement] funded facilities and reunifying minors with a relative or advisable sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. Reunification is ever the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of [unaccompanied children], and the administration is working towards that for those [unaccompanied children] currently in HHS custody."
Reyna Torres Mendivil, Mexico'southward delegate full general in San Antonio, told NPR'south Audie Cornish that the process would be hampered by the U.S. separation procedure, which keeps parents in federal custody while moving children into facilities controlled by the Department of Health and Man Services.
"The U.S. authorities create different files for the children than for the parents, and it's very difficult to follow upward on those cases," Torres said.
What's the reaction to the executive gild?
Immigrant advocates say the president's executive order is no solution and will but create more trauma for children because they volition be placed in facilities that are unfit for minors.
"First, in that location are more 2,000 children already separated from their parents; the executive order does nothing to address that nightmare," said Michelle Brané, manager of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women's Refugee Committee. "Second, this executive order finer creates family prisons, which nosotros already know are a threat to the well-existence of children."
"The president doesn't get any Brownie points for moving from a policy of locking up kids and families separately to a policy of locking them upward together," said Karen Tumlin, director of legal strategy at the National Immigration Law Center. "Let'due south be clear: Trump is making a crisis of his own creation worse."
Some on the correct are equally dismayed.
"According to whatever off-white reading of the order, it represents a massive capitulation past the assistants," wrote National Review senior writer David French.
Only Marker Krikorian, executive director of the D.C.-based Middle for Immigration Studies, which supports limited immigration, supported the president.
"Getting rid of the Flores Settlement is the quickest fashion to solve the problem," Krikorian told The Washington Post. "The government has been faced with the option of either splitting the family by detaining the parent and releasing the kid, or just letting the parent go too."
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Source: https://www.npr.org/2018/06/20/622095441/trump-executive-order-on-family-separation-what-it-does-and-doesnt-do