Nearly 9,000 migrant children have been expelled under pandemic border policy, court documents say
BY CAMILO MONTOYA-GALVEZ
SEPTEMBER 11, 2020 / 5:00 PM / CBS NEWS
At least 8,800 migrant children who arrived at the southern border without their parents have been swiftly expelled from the country and denied U.S. refuge during the pandemic under an emergency policy, the Trump administration told a federal court on Friday.
In addition to the unaccompanied minors, approximately 7,600 members of migrant families with children have been expelled from the U.S.-Mexico border since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a public health order authorizing these expulsions in mid-March.
With single adults accounted for, more than 159,000 expulsions have been carried out under the unprecedented restrictions, which the Trump administration says are designed to avert coronavirus outbreaks inside migrant holding facilities and among the broader U.S. population.
"The numbers are stunning," Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, told CBS News. "Having talked to so many kids who come here seeking asylum and knowing the fear that they have and what they're fleeing, to find out that our government has literally taken children who are seeking protection and sent them back to the very places they fled in such high numbers really took my breath away."
Citing the CDC order, U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials have suspended humanitarian protections for most border-crossers, arguing that public health law overrides asylum, immigration and anti-trafficking safeguards during a pandemic. Instead of placing migrants in regular deportation proceedings and transferring most unaccompanied children to the U.S. refugee agency, which is required under a 2008 anti-trafficking law, border officials have been making rapid expulsions.
The previously undisclosed figures were revealed in documents the Trump administration submitted as part of an emergency request for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to stay a lower court order from last week. That ruling ordered the government to stop holding migrant children in hotel rooms before expelling them.
more:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/8800-migrant-children-have-been-expelled-under-pandemic-border-policy-per-court-documents/
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