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Advocates criticize Trump about asylum seekers
Immigrant rights advocates say that the Trump Administration is using the coronavirus pandemic to turn away all asylum seekers coming to the U.S., including unaccompanied minors..
The efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 mean that hundreds of people seeking a new life in America are being turned away at the border, many of whom are unaccompanied minors.
At the outset of the outbreak, the Trump administration used a 1940’s-era law to effectively stop all entry into the United States at the southern border, turning away asylum seekers.
“The government has decided to restrict all humanitarian immigration under and order that allows them to ignore the law essentially and turn away children in need,” said Anthony Enriquez, Director of the Unaccompanied Minors Program at Catholic Charities Community Services.
According to Enriquez, hundreds of unaccompanied minors are being turned away at the border and some are being suddenly deported from shelters across the nation.
“In the months of March and April, over 900 children have been turned away at the border, children seeking help, and over 60 children in the interior of the country have been deported from shelters where they once were receiving help,” Enriquez said.
Enriquez says many of the children who are being deported are being sent back to their home countries without the opportunity to seek legal counsel and plead their asylum case, a reversal of a practice that has been in place in the U.S. for years.
Hannah Flamm, Managing Attorney of the Detained Minors Project at The Doors Legal Services Center alleges that the Trump Administration is also deporting migrant children at random hours of the night, a practice she says is illegal.
“On Monday, May 11, around 8 p.m. was ICE was attempting to put our 14-year-old client on a 3 a.m. flight to the border and from there to Honduras where she has no living parents and where she fled after her father was kidnapped,” Flamm said.
Flamm’s client, whose name is being withheld because she is a minor, was in a federal shelter in New York when ICE arrived with an order of removal. Flamm says that her client had an old order of removal, and her case was in the middle of proceedings. Flamm says that if the teen had not insisted on contacting her lawyer, she would have been deported that night without notification to her or to the girl’s family.
“The government is not playing by the rules,” Flamm said.
“When removing an unaccompanied alien child, ICE ensures compliance with the respective country’s repatriation agreement with the U.S. government. Further, UAC removals are coordinated with the local consulate,” ICE said in a statement to FOX 5 NY.