A congressional committee is contemplating steps to end legal assistance and trafficking protections for unaccompanied immigrant children and enacting oppressive regulations such as charging families $8,500 for the release of a youth from U.S. custody, child advocates warned during an recent webinar.
“All the implications of the House Judiciary (Committee) reconciliation text for unaccompanied children are, in a word, catastrophic. The text would effectively end the U.S. protection system for this uniquely vulnerable population,” said Jason Boyd, vice president of U.S. federal policy for Kids in Need of Defense, or KIND.
Jim Jordan
The language was proposed by Republican Jim Jordan of Ohio, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee. Jordan has a track record as one of the most strident conservatives in Congress.
The language put forward would gut the 2008 bipartisan Trafficking Victims Protections Reauthorization Act as well as a separate legal agreement governing the detention, treatment and release of unaccompanied immigrant minors in the U.S., Boyd explained during the virtual panel presentation.
The measure would defund the law’s requirement that migrant youth seeking refuge at the southern border be granted hearings in immigration court to weigh the merits of their cases.
“This reconciliation text gives CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) newfound authority to instead summarily return many such children to their countries of origin with no hearing and virtually no due process. This would all but ensure the return of many children to trafficking, abuse and other dangers even if children aren’t summarily returned,” Boyd said.
The Trump administration launched its own assault on the anti-trafficking act in March by withholding $200 million in mandated and congressionally approved legal aid for about 26,000 children with cases in immigration court. The government ignored a subsequent court order to restore the program and was again ordered by a federal judge to maintain the funding as a lawsuit proceeds.
The proposed Congressional language also would impose “an unprecedented fee structure” on children who would be considered eligible for entering the country, including a $1,000 fee to apply for asylum. “In fact, the cumulative fees required for an unaccompanied child to seek humanitarian relief would in many cases exceed $15,000, pricing children out of lifesaving legal relief and rendering the TVPRA safeguards meaningless,” Boyd said.
Jennifer Podkul
Proposed changes would deter parents and other family members from filing for sponsorship and release of detained children by requiring the Office of Refugee Resettlement to share the immigration status of those adults with the Department of Homeland Security, Boyd explained.
“The information sharing will leave most children without any safe placement options, not only keeping them separated from loved ones, but contributing to prolonged, even indefinite stays of children in government custody where it becomes exponentially more difficult for them to receive fair legal representation,” he added.
The Congressional effort seeks to bypass existing laws protecting immigrant children by dismantling the funding of protections mandated under U.S. law, said Jennifer Podkul, chief of global policy and advocacy at KIND. “This piece of legislation is not an ordinary spending bill. It is an attempt to rewrite federal law and even longstanding legal settlements under the guise of a spending bill.”
“It is an attempt to rewrite federal law and even longstanding legal settlements under the guise of a spending bill.”
Taxpayers should not be forced to foot the bill for catastrophic policies that not only deny protections to youth, but actually impose additional harms on them, she said.
“I’ve been doing this work for a very long time, and what I read in this bill took my breath away. This bill not only makes it virtually impossible for children to access protection in the United States, but it would make the government responsible for putting children and even more compromised and dangerous conditions.”
Rricha deCant
Another alarming aspect of the text is its proposal to significantly increase the capacity of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to apprehend and deport immigrants, said Rricha deCant, director of legislative affairs at the Center for Law and Social Policy.
As worded, the measure would provide $8 billion annually to the agency and add 10,000 new officers to enforce policies that “attack children and families,” she said. “In the next five years, the Trump administration is already repurposing taxpayer dollars without the consent of Congress to further their mass deportation agenda, and ICE enforcement actions are happening all across the country already from schools and the homes of immigrant families and sponsors of unaccompanied children.”
deCant cited the recent apprehension and deportation of two immigrant mothers and their U.S.-citizen children, including one child with Stage 4 cancer, as examples of the increasing cruelty of the federal government’s immigrant roundup.
“More resources will not make these enforcement actions more humane,” she said. In fact, they’re going to make the crisis much worse. The administration has already rescinded a 30-year-old policy put in place to protect sensitive locations, which are places such as schools and hospitals that have previously been off limits for ICE to come to and detain people.”
“No one should have to pay that much to be reunited with their child.”
With $45 billion included to build more family detention centers, the measure also would contribute to the deterioration of mental and physical health among immigrant youth and force many families into poverty to regain custody of their children, she said.
“There’s a $8,500 fee for sponsors of unaccompanied children, which is an assault on parental rights, and no one should have to pay that much to be reunited with their child. It is outrageous that the government expects a parent of a child or a family member to have to pay thousands of dollars, and honestly, it’s like holding these children ransom.”
Jean Bruggeman
But the policy no doubt will benefit those who profit from the vulnerability of children and families, said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of the Freedom Network.
“What we’re doing is just sending kids back to the hands of the traffickers who brought them to the border, and without even thinking twice about whether or not those kids need our protection. So right there, we’ve already started gifting traffickers with impunity.”
The fees imposed by the proposal will serve to leave most incarcerated immigrant children in detention and therefore vulnerable to deportation, she added. “This leaves kids dependent on their traffickers. Again, a gift to traffickers telling these kids that we no longer care what is happening to them and we are fine with leaving them in a situation of abuse and exploitation because it’s simply too expensive for us to protect them.”
Other Republican members of the committee are Darrell Issa, Calif.; Andy Biggs, Ariz.; Tom McClintock, Calif.; Thomas P. Tiffany, Wis.; Thomas Massie, Ky.; Chip Roy, Texas; Scott Fitzgerald, Wis.; Ben Cline, Va.; Lance Gooden, Texas; Jefferson Van Drew, N.J.; Troy Nehls, Texas; Barry Moore, Ala.; Kevin Kiley, Calif.; Harriet Hageman, Wyo.; Laurel Lee, Fla.; Wesley Hunt, Texas; Russell Fry, S.C.; Glenn Grothman, Wis.; Brad Knott, N.C.; Mark Harris, N.C.; Robert F. Onder, Mo.; Derek Schmidt, Kan.; Brandon Gill, Texas; Michael Baumgartner, Wash.
Jamie Raskin, D-Md., is the Ranking Member of the committee from the Democratic side. Other Democratic members of the committee are Jerrold Nadler, N.Y.; Zoe Lofgren, Calif.; Steve Cohen, Tenn.; Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Ga.; Eric Swalwell, Calif.; Ted Lieu, Calif.; Pramila Jayapal, Wash.; J. Luis Correa, Calif.; Mary Gay Scanlon, Pa.; Joe Neguse, Colo.; Lucy McBath, Ga.; Deborah K. Ross, N.C.; Becca Balint, Vt.; Jesús G. “Chuy” García, Ill.; Sydney Kamlager-Dove, Calif.; Jared Moskowitz, Fla.; Daniel S. Goldman, N.Y.; and Jasmine Crockett, Texas.
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