- The Trump Administration’s crack down on legal immigration has frequently targeted the most vulnerable, including children. The administration recently cancelled contracts for nonprofits that provide legal representation to unaccompanied minors, and now attorneys are scrambling to protect nearly 2,000 children from indefinite detention and deportation. These children entered the country as unaccompanied minors, and in a humane administration, they would normally be reunited with family here in the US. However, DHS has placed new roadblocks that significantly delay, if not block, such reunifications, meaning that the children are stuck in detention centers awaiting resolution of their cases. At the same time, the administration has accelerated hearings for these children with government attorneys arguing for their quick removal from the country. Over 50 nonprofits across the country have now joined together to form the Children’s Due Process Project to file habeas corpus petitions in federal court for each of these children on a pro bono basis in a concerted effort to get them released to their families. “It’s really devastating to see the cruelty that’s taking place everywhere,” said one attorney who is part of this effort. “This is not something that has happened en masse for children during other administrations.”
- On Monday, Pierre Damas Bel, a 20-year old student from Haiti, committed suicide by walking into traffic on an interstate highway. Bel was a college student who had been on Temporary Protected Status until the administration cruelly stripped the status away from hundreds of thousands of people who are seeking safe refuge in the US. He had been placed on an ankle monitor after his status was taken away and experienced shame and bullying as a result. Advocates are rightly pointing their fingers squarely at the administration for this avoidable tragedy; Guerline Jozef of Haitian Bridge Alliance said that, “Our government, our system, our Supreme Court – they’re all complicit in the death of this young man.” Bel’s pastor, Carl Ruby, also looked to the administration as the cause, saying that “[i]t’s our immigration policy that took his life,” and calling for Washington to find a solution to this political problem.
- A federal judge in Maryland blocked the administration’s latest attempts to ignore the Constitution and redefine who is born as a citizen in the United States. In August, Trump issued an executive order that attempted to restrict birthright citizenship despite the Supreme Court having struck down a similar attempt in July. In Wednesday’s order issuing an injunction, the court noted that, “The Supreme Court has spoken: Children in the certified class are ‘citizens at birth’”. The decision came a day after the State Department proposed requiring parents to prove their own citizenship in order to obtain US passports for their children.