Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/ice/)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A government watchdog says the Trump administration, under its practice of separating families at the border, forced migrant parents to leave the U.S. without their children, contradicting claims by officials that parents were willingly leaving them behind.
I was 5 years old in 2007, when my mother left Mazatenango, our small village in southern Guatemala. Gangs run that town and evil runs everywhere.
It’s fair to say that most of us working in the youth justice field do so because we’re committed to brighter futures for all kids, especially the ones facing the longest odds. We believe in human potential and second chances. We also believe that ensuring young people reach that potential requires policies that keep families together and allow them to flourish, communities that support them and systems that protect them.
My husband, Steve, and his first wife, Laurene, moved to Eastern Europe shortly after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall. The day before they boarded the plane to move to Bratislava, Slovakia, Steve and Laurene discovered that they were expecting, unexpectedly, twins! Since Bratislava’s medical care was still behind those of Western Europe and the birth of twins is a higher risk pregnancy, they chose to go to Vienna, Austria for the pregnancy care and birth. Early one morning Laurene’s water broke and they made a harried run across the Danube River for the Slovakia/Austria border. Before long David and Paul made their dramatic debut about a minute apart via C-Section. Steve and Laurene planned on living there long-term, but a breast cancer diagnosis short-circuited those dreams. At six months of age, the twins were brought to America for the first time.
The Obama administration will no longer deport and begin granting work permits to young undocumented immigrants who came to the United States as children, The New York Times reports. The policy change does not need Congressional approval. President Obama will discuss the plan at a press conference in the Rose Garden Friday afternoon. The policy change could affect some 800,000 immigrants who are younger than 30 and arrived in the United States before they turned 16, according to The Times. Additionally, they must have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have a high school diploma or GED earned in the United States, served in the military or have no criminal history.
This story originally appeared on iWatchnews.org by the Center for Public Integrity
Immigration officials, advocates clash over policies
A new report is adding fuel to a growing debate over the impact of deportations of illegal immigrants who have roots in communities and U.S.-born children. Between January and June of 2011, immigration officials deported more than 46,400 people who said they were parents of children who were born in the U.S. and therefore U.S. citizens, according to a new study for Congress prepared by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. No solid information exists to measure what happens to deported parents’ children. Some leave with their parents, others remain here with family members or on their own and some may go into foster care. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security issued a report with an estimate that about 100,000 parents of U.S. children were deported over the course of a decade between 1998 and 2007. Congress directed ICE to begin tracking numbers to better gauge the extent of this phenomenon.
While the battle over immigration plays out across the country, children of immigrants in Georgia face fear, anxiety and stress-related health problems, according to a report from the Sapelo Foundation. Children who are U.S. citizens by birth, are getting separated from their families more often as local police agencies arrest illegal immigrants under the expanding 287 (g) program. The study also found women and children who are victims of assault and domestic abuse are afraid to call police because they fear getting deported. In Immigration Enforcement and its Impact on Latino Children in the State of Georgia, author Elise Shore spells out long-term, traumatic consequences for children. Among the recommendations:
Prohibit checkpoints and road blocks near schools, churches and day care centers
Local police should adopt ICE humanitarian guidelines for sole caregivers
The foster care system needs bilingual and bicultural workers to understand the needs of immigrants