JOIN USBiden admin to shorten detention of migrant families
In an attempt to prevent the detention of migrant families for weeks or months at a time, the Biden administration plans to release parents and children within 72 hours of their arrival in the United States, a new policy that already is being carried out along the Texas border.
The plan, confirmed Thursday by three Homeland Security officials, marks a significant departure from the handling of migrant families under the Trump and Obama administrations when children often showed symptoms of depression and trauma after spending long periods in custody with their parents.
The decision to avoid lengthy detention of families comes amid a significant spike in the number arriving at the southwestern border in recent months that has posed an early test of President Joe Biden’s pledge to create a more humanitarian approach to immigration.
Former President Donald Trump had vowed to end what he called the “catch and release” policies of his predecessors and significantly increased the number of asylum-seekers who were held in detention facilities, rather than being allowed to settle around the country as they waited for immigration courts to decide whether they could stay.
Under the latest plan, Immigration and Customs Enforcement will hold families only for the time required to schedule court dates, conduct Covid-19 tests and arrange for them to be transferred to shelters, where volunteers and aid workers help schedule their travel to join relatives already in the country.
About 100 families per day would be processed and released from two existing family residential centres in Texas.
As of Thursday, several dozen migrants travelling as families were being held at a facility in Karnes City, Texas, and more than 300 at another, in Dilley, Texas. The two detention centres have a combined capacity of 3,200.
The family residential centres were erected during the Obama administration to house a surge of Central American families fleeing gang violence and poverty who travelled to the border — often guided by human smugglers — and requested asylum.
Many of them were held for months until an immigration judge heard their asylum cases. But a federal judge in California determined that the prolonged detention was a violation of a settlement decree, known as the Flores agreement, that limited the length of time children could be held in government custody.