Tag Archives: border wall

It would take “something dramatic” in the coming days to persuade President Trump not to close the U.S.-Mexico border, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday, and White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said the president’s threat “certainly isn’t a bluff.”

The two senior staffers, appearing separately on Sunday morning talk shows, also reiterated the administration’s intention to cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance — including programs designed to curb gang violence — to the “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Those countries are the primary source of tens of thousands of migrants, including caravans of families with children, who have been presenting themselves at ports of entry and asking for political asylum in an escalating humanitarian crisis at the border.

“Democrats didn’t believe us a month ago, two months ago when we said what was happening at the border was a crisis, a humanitarian crisis, a security crisis,” Mulvaney said on ABC News’s “This Week.” He said the administration is talking about closing the border because “we need the people from the ports of entry to go out and patrol in the desert, where we don’t have any wall.”

He also called on the Mexican government to solidify its southern border and said Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador need to do more to prevent their citizens from entering Mexico. If they cannot do that, he said, “it makes very little sense for us to continue to send them aid.”

Conway, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” pushed back against the notion that cutting aid to those countries would make matters worse. “The conditions are already awful,” she said. “The executive branch has done so much to try to mitigate these awful circumstances, and we need to send a message back to these countries, too.”

Closing the border is a drastic measure that would have immediate consequences not only for families seeking asylum but also for trade and commerce between the United States and Mexico. Mexico is the third-largest trading partner of the United States, with more than $611 billion in cross-border trade last year, according to the Commerce Department. At the port of Calexico East, Calif., more than 1,000 trucks cross the border each day. Laredo, Tex., sees more than 11 trains each day transit the border, according to the U.S. Transportation Department.

If the border closure applied to goods and vehicles as well as people, the economic consequences would be immediate and severe, with automakers and American farmers among the first to feel the pain, according to trade specialists.

“It’s unworkable and unrealistic, and I don’t think he could really do it,” Rufus Yerxa, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents multinational corporations, said Sunday.

Suddenly closing the flow of people and goods between the United States and Mexico would interrupt the flow of parts headed to American factories, which could bring some production to a halt. Likewise, refrigerated trucks full of beef and other perishable commodities would jam border crossings.

“The first question would be: Where do you put it?” said William Reinsch, a former Commerce Department official. “Stuff is going to stack up at the border because it’s already on the way there.”

To deal with “an unprecedented humanitarian and border security crisis all along our Southwest border,” the agency said it had redeployed 750 border agents.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), appearing on NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” said, “When the president says he’s going to close the border, that is a totally unrealistic boast on his part. What we need to do is focus on what’s happening in Central America.”

Durbin said the government needs to prioritize the humanitarian crisis unfolding along the U.S.-Mexico border:

“The first thing we need to do is meet the humanitarian needs at the border instead of building fences two or three years in the future by taking money from Department of Defense, focus on facilities to serve these families so that there aren’t children who are hurt and dying as a result of this situation.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), a 2020 presidential candidate, said on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” that there is a “terrible humanitarian crisis” at the border and that the United States needs comprehensive immigration reform. He added, “We need to make sure that our borders are secure, but also we need a humane policy at the border in which we are not yanking tiny children from the arms of their mothers.”

Trump took to Twitter on Saturday to implore Mexico to “stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA.” He wrote: “Our detention areas are maxed out & we will take no more illegals. Next step is to close the Border! This will also help us with stopping the Drug flow from Mexico!”

The president told reporters on Friday, “If they don’t stop them, we are closing the border. We’ll close it. And we’ll keep it closed for a long time. I’m not playing games.”

Under U.S. law, people who reach the U.S. border are entitled to request asylum. But in recent months, the number of arrivals has spiked and is now at about 100,000 people a month. This has overwhelmed the system. The immigration courts have backlogs of hundreds of thousands of cases.

There is profound partisan disagreement over how to handle it. Trump continues to press for a border wall and wants to take money from military projects to build new barriers. Democrats have pushed for facilities to handle incoming families and have excoriated the Trump administration for separating migrant children from their parents under a now-rescinded policy.

Mexico’s leftist government has addressed the migrant caravans by offering thousands of short-term humanitarian visas allowing migrants to live and work in the country. In a remarkable concession, it agreed to a Trump administration request to host migrants who are undergoing U.S. asylum proceedings, a controversial program dubbed “Remain in Mexico.”

So far this year, Mexico has deported roughly 25,000 Central Americans, according to its immigration agency. Earlier this week, Mexico deported 66 Cubans who were planning to join a migrant caravan traveling to the United States. Between 2015 and 2018, Mexico deported 436,125 Central Americans, many of them on their way to the United States.

Jim Nealon, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, said Trump didn’t seem to understand that Central American countries were already working with the United States to discourage the flow of migrants.

“But they can’t prevent their citizens from leaving their countries any more than [Trump] can prevent citizens from leaving the U.S.,” Nealon said.

Sheridan reported from Mexico City. Nick Miroff in Washington and Kevin Sieff in Mexico City contributed to this report.

Authors: JOEL ACHENBACH, MARY BETH SHERIDAN AND DAVID J. LYNCH, THE WASHINGTON POST

I have devoted the entirety of my adult life to keeping Americans safe. For nearly a decade, I served as an undercover officer in the CIA during the Global War on Terror.

My job was to stop bad people from doing bad things in our homeland.

Since being in Congress, I’ve made border security one of my top priorities. In fact, the very first bill I had signed into law prevented significant pay cuts for our Border Patrol Agents. I have also fought to increase funding for the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency responsible for protecting our borders.

Over the last four years, I’ve voted for $220 billion in funding to help provide more resources to the Department. Through my work, the House has passed funding for a diverse arsenal of tools to protect the southern border such as:

• $8 billion for border infrastructure, which includes physical barriers and associated technology;
• $18.7 billion for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement personnel;
• $1 billion in improvements at our Ports of Entry; and,
• $270 million in the last 2 years for the use of technology to detect border crossings.

What is happening at our border is a significant problem – 400,000 people attempted to come into our country illegally last year and over $67 billion worth of illegal drugs flowed into our communities. It’s 2019 and we still don’t have operational control of our border. When I say operational control I mean we should know everything that is coming back and forth across our border. We haven’t been able to achieve this ability because we haven’t been pursuing a strategy of focusing on all 2,000 miles of our border at the same time. We currently have 654 miles of physical barriers and Congress has funded the construction of 88 more miles.

Even the President emphasized that “We do not need 2,000 miles of concrete wall from sea to shining sea.” Because every mile of our border is different, requiring a different approach that accounts for the unique geographic, cultural and technological conditions along our border.

We need to be using all of our available resources, including: physical barriers in densely-populated areas, technology so we can track threats until the brave men and women of border patrol can conduct an arrest, and we need more men and women in Border Patrol.

As your Representative, and the Representative of over 820 miles of our U.S.-Mexico border, I have consistently supported bills and worked with my colleagues and folks back home to develop initiatives that keep you safe.

Border Security is critical to our national security, and I will continue to do everything in my power to protect the safety of communities in South and West Texas.

###

A former undercover CIA officer, entrepreneur and cybersecurity expert, Will Hurd is the U.S. Representative for the 23rd Congressional District of Texas. In Washington, he serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where he is the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intelligence Modernization and Readiness, and the House Committee on Appropriations, where he serves on the Subcommittees on Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development

President Trump on Friday declared a national emergency as a means to circumvent Congress and build additional border barriers. He is seeking to secure about $6.5 billion more in funding than Congress has approved.

Trump also plans to sign spending legislation to avert a government shutdown, his acting chief of staff said.

Many of Trump’s Republican allies have called a national emergency ill-advised, and Democrats immediately called the move unconstitutional on Friday. The declaration is expected to face an array of legal challenges.

Friday’s announcement follows passage of a 1,169-page spending bill that provides $1.375 billion for 55 miles of new fences along the border in Texas, far short of the $5.7 billion Trump had sought for 234 miles of steel walls.

Trump wrapped up a Rose Garden news conference that stretched about 50 minutes without saying he would sign the spending bill. Speaking to reporters earlier, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Trump intends to sign the spending bill on Friday or possibly Saturday.

In a statement issued as Trump continued to speak in the Rose Garden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer called Trump’s emergency declaration “unlawful.”

“The President’s actions clearly violate the Congress’s exclusive power of the purse, which our Founders enshrined in the Constitution,” the two Democratic leaders said. “The Congress will defend our constitutional authorities in the Congress, in the Courts, and in the public, using every remedy available.”

“The President is not above the law,” Pelosi and Schumer added. “The Congress cannot let the President shred the Constitution.”

Authors: DAMIAN PALETTA, JOHN WAGNER AND JOSH DAWSEY, THE WASHINGTON POST

Officials with Protect Democracy and the Niskanen Center announced Friday morning that they have prepared a lawsuit and will file it if President Trump issues a declaration of national emergency.

In early January, the President threatened to declare a national emergency if Congress did not allocate border wall funding. On Friday, the White House announced that it would declare a national emergency.

Via a news release, the groups shared, “There is no legal basis for issuing such a declaration and its issuance will injure specific parties and communities on the border, including the County of El Paso and the Border Network for Human Rights, who we will represent in litigation if it becomes necessary. ”

Kristy Parker, Counsel for Protect Democracy and co-counsel for this pending litigation said: “Throughout history, autocrats have used so-called emergency powers to seize control from democratic systems that don’t yield to their will. Often, they have invented fake crises for this purpose and we should all be extremely alarmed that President Trump has reached for this tool in the autocrat’s toolkit. Thankfully, our founders also knew that the seizing of legislative powers by the executive was, in the words of James Madison, ‘the very definition of tyranny’ and made it unlawful. It’s unlawful here and we look forward to the courts upholding our framers’ vision.”

“America is governed by the rule of law and the separation of powers. President Trump’s threat to declare a national emergency would violate both of these.,” Kristie De Peña, Director of Immigration and Senior Counsel for the Niskanen Center and co-counsel for the prospective lawsuit against President Trump, said. “Our lawsuit would aim to stop the dangerous precedent this would establish for the presidency and the immediate harm it would inflict on communities along the border.”

Fernando Garcia, Executive Director of the Border Network for Human Rights, said: “President Trump’s emergency is a manufactured crisis. In his anti-immigrant statements about border crossings, even President Trump himself has suggested that this is a political hammer rather than a real emergency. The Border Network for Human Rights has worked for years to cultivate the relationships for a safe community. We did not do this by building walls or by criminalizing and persecuting immigrants.”

The Border Network for Human Rights is an immigration reform and human rights advocacy organization with a membership of nearly 4000 people in border communities in West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The County of El Paso, Texas, with a population of more than 800,000, sits on the Rio Grande directly along the southern U.S. border.

The President’s declaration of an “emergency” at the Southern border that includes El Paso County, and the promised but unauthorized construction of additional miles of border walls and barriers will immediately harm the interests of the Border Network for Human Rights and the County of El Paso, Texas.

Ricardo A. Samaniego, El Paso County Judge, said: “El Paso County is one of the safest communities in the United States. President Trump has already made many negative and false statements about our community in the attempt to justify his border wall. He has never reached out to the leadership of our community to determine if this is actually an emergency. This threatened emergency declaration will further damage El Paso County’s reputation and economy, and we are determined to stop this from happening.”

If the President follows through in using emergency powers to override the will of Congress, it would usurp the Constitutional authority granted to Congress to pass laws and appropriate government funds. It is inconsistent with the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers and threatens our representative democracy.

The Border Network for Human Rights is an immigration reform and human rights advocacy organization with a membership of nearly 4000 people in border communities in West Texas and Southern New Mexico. The County of El Paso, Texas, with a population of more than 800,000, sits on the Rio Grande directly along the southern U.S. border.

Should the President issue a declaration of national emergency, more information about the litigation that would follow will be available at protectdemocracy.org

As the government shutdown approached its fifth week and Washington Democrats and President Donald Trump showed no signs of coming to an agreement on how to end the stalemate Tuesday, U.S. Border Patrol vehicles could be seen patrolling just north of the Rio Grande near El Paso’s Paso del Norte bridge.

Farther west along Paisano street and across Interstate 10 from the University of Texas-El Paso, more green-and-white vans sat parked just south of the fencing that has dotted this part of the border for more than a decade.

Meanwhile, the pedestrian line for travelers returning to El Paso from Ciudad Juárez moved steadily, and eight of the 12 vehicle lanes were open and operating normally, despite the shutdown that has forced Customs and Border Protection officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents to work without pay as Trump demands $5.7 billion for a border wall before he’ll sign a spending bill to re-open the government and Congress resists.

But despite the feeling of normalcy, a current Department of Homeland Security agent who previously worked for the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection said the federal employees on the front line of the national immigration battle are beginning to feel the strains of the impasse.

“Morale is definitely low [inside the department]. But I can’t imagine how it is at the bridge,” said the agent, who spoke to The Texas Tribune on condition of anonymity because he’s not authorized to speak to reporters. “These guys are still working overtime … and they’re not getting paychecks. They’re working 16-hour shifts, then they go home and have to stress about the bills.”

That anxiety isn’t isolated to the country’s borders. Some of the nation’s busiest airports are seeing long security lines as an increasing number of Transportation Security Administration agents refuse to work without pay; small businesses with federal government contracts aren’t getting paid either. In El Paso, immigration attorneys whose clients are waiting for court hearings are worried about how the stalemate is going to affect those cases now that federal immigration courts are closed except for cases involving people held in detention.

According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, at Syracuse University, more than 42,700 immigration hearings have been canceled as of Jan. 11, including 5,141 in Texas — the third-highest total after California and New York, where 9,424 and 5,320 cases have been canceled, respectively. The cancellations come as the backlog of immigration cases skyrocketed to 809,000 in November, according to TRAC data.

If the shutdown continues through the end of January, the TRAC report states, New York, Texas and Florida could each see more than 10,000 hearings canceled.

El Paso immigration lawyer Eduardo Beckett said the shutdown is good news for his clients who are facing possible deportation orders or denials of their asylum claims. But, he added, “it’s a nightmare for the ones that are ready to go, those that are gung ho and are ready for their day in court.”

On Monday, he was unsure whether he would have to hustle to Los Angeles later this week to represent a client there because as of Monday, the hearing was still scheduled. Another client is in North Carolina and had an immigration hearing scheduled in Texas at the end of the month but, like the California hearing, it will be canceled if the shutdown continues.

After Beckett helped both immigrants in posting bond and filing their asylum claims, they told Beckett they would find new attorneys outside of Texas — but he said he isn’t able to file motions to withdraw or to change venues. Clerks are still accepting paperwork, but the clock on those requests won’t start until the government is back to operating under its normal schedule.

A call to the U.S. Department of Justice was answered by a recording that said, “the phone line will be unmanned for an indefinite period.”

Beckett said the irony is that Trump’s administration has pushed to speed up deportations and asylum decisions to make a dent in the backlog of cases that can take years to resolve.

“I feel bad for government employees, but I believe that this administration is 100 percent at fault,” he said.

The DHS agent said Border Patrol and Customs workers have become accustomed to working overtime, including double shifts. And that doesn’t end during a shutdown.

“When you sign up you’re basically saying that you’re willing to work overtime, whether it’s voluntary or whether they order you to work it,” the agent said.

He added that in his experience, he doesn’t see that the current barriers on the U.S-Mexico border are stopping illegal crossers — and he supports the president’s effort to build something that will.

“I can’t see why [undocumented immigrants] wouldn’t just keep doing the things they’re doing, [like] getting on a ladder and coming over, roping over or going underneath and destroying the fence,” he said. “I don’t know what kind of fence he’s trying to construct, but if is a fence that’s going to deter those types on entries, then I am all for it.”

Author: JULIÁN AGUILAR – The Texas Tribune

Before the first words of President Trump’s prime time Oval Office address Tuesday night, border human rights advocates already had a rebuttal ready.

“What we have seen at the border over the past two years are the impacts and chaos caused by a cruel and racist President who has no respect for the rule of law,” Fernando Garcia with the Border Network for Human Rights said just moments after the Presidential Address was over.

The first Presidential prime time address was meant to convince Americans that the government shutdown, now in its 17th day, is needed in order to hold out for funding for a steel fence along the nation’s southern border.

Many immigration advocates at Tuesday night’s event at BNHR say the address did little to provide concrete evidence of a sincere crisis at our southern border.

“Why, even if there was something urgent at the border right now, why this administration would choose to respond with a wall that will take years or decades to build,” said Garcia.

Former Congressman Beto O’Rourke, who now has a massive online following, decided to take a direct approach to the assertion by President Trump that there is a national emergency at the border.

O’Rourke took to Facebook live to walk viewers around his Sunset Heights neighborhood, discuss the proximity of El Paso to Ciudad Juarez and our dependence on each other for economic and social prosperity. Former City Council member Steve Ortega and Joel Guzman, both fellow Sunset Heights residents joined in on the discussion.

While Trump was quick to bring up two recent murders in the U.S. allegedly committed by undocumented immigrants, he also failed to mention the deaths of Guatemalan migrant children Jakelin Caal or Felipe Alonso-Gomez, who both became ill and died while in custody of the U.S. Border Patrol.

Father Arturo Bañuelos with the Catholic Diocese argued that the lack of the President’s compassion for the true humanitarian crisis happening across the border was part of a larger problem.

“We need real, lasting, humane, and permanent solutions ro our immigration system that provide a path to citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S. and that builds a legal system that comforts with reality moving forward. With a President unable and unwilling to act, Congress must lead,” said Garcia.

During Christmas week, El Paso saw a massive surge of migrants being released by ICE from detention facilities, which sent organizations in the Sun City to scramble to house and feed the massive release of families.

On December 26, ICE released a record 522 migrants from detention in a single day. By Wednesday, January 9, all three of the emergency shelters that were opened by Annunciation House during Christmas to house the unexpected surge of migrants will be closed. The closures are representative of a return to ‘normal’ release numbers by ICE since New Year’s Day.

The overall flow of migrant families into the U.S. is still far more than it has been in recent memory according to Annunciation House Executive Director Ruben Garcia in a previous interview.

President Trump is expected to make a trip to McAllen on Thursday to survey the southern border for himself. While he has previously indicated he would consider declaring a national emergency in order to fund the construction of the Border Wall, he stopped short of any declaration on Tuesday during his address.

In a response via Twitter Tuesday night, Congresswoman Veronica Escobar said “Tonight’s speech offered nothing new, just another glimpse at a POTUS w/ no understanding of how to cope w/ challenges of changing migration patterns. When he goes to south TX on Thurs, he’ll do the usual photo ops w/ federal agents. Maybe he’ll wear cowboy boots and ride a horse.”

The El Paso Herald Post will continue to offer coverage of the proposed Border Wall and the Government Shutdown.

Watch Full Border Network for Human Rights Press Conference Below

President Trump’s Address to the Nation on Border Security (Courtesy CSpan)

 

 

 

With the issue of border security and border wall funding flooding just about every media outlet, the topic of the wall, and just how and where it will be built has been popular fodder for many.

And while the government could use eminent domain to just take land from private owners who are otherwise unwilling – should funding become available – to build the wall; the company that’s behind a popular, risque card game has taken matters into their own hands.

Cards Against Humanity has recently asked patrons to donate a mere $15 each. As many as 150,000 donations have been received, thus far, and a portion of the money has already been used for purchasing land along the southern border.

Aside from this, CAH has also retained the legal services of Graves, Hearon, Dougherty, and Moody, a team that specializes in eminent domain cases, which has released a statement.

In a humorous (maybe not) statement on their website, the card game said, “Since the Trump Administration is committed to using 12th century technology to protect our country from Mexican invaders, we have responded in kind by building a 30-foot trebuchet, a medieval catapult designed to destroy walls.”

While they admit that the government is more powerful than a comedy card game, they assure their followers that they intend to do everything possible to protest the wall and slow down the process of eminent domain.

And though they have also stated that they are not actually threatening to use their trebuchet to destroy government property with their glorious medieval machine, they are only saying that it would be possible if they actually wanted to do such a thing.

With all joking aside, the President has shut down parts of the government over lack of wall funding, a shut down that could continue for months or even years, by his own words.

Meanwhile, over 800,000 federal workers are going without pay. Included in these are TSA staff.

And as was recently brought to light in a Fox News interview with Sarah Huckabee Sanders, most suspected terrorists are not apprehended at the southern border, but rather at airports. And now those points of entry are at risk with shortened staffing as workers have been calling out to work, so they can try to earn much needed money elsewhere.

In the meantime, Cards Against Humanity listed several organizations that can be contacted if you want to do your legal part to help:
The ACLU, the ICIRR. Texas Civil Rights Project, Refugee One, MoveOn.org, and National Immigrant Justice Center

Customs and Border Protection Officers scheduled a ‘crowd control exercise’ at the U.S. – Mexico Border in Chihuahuita and then abruptly canceled the event without explanation on Election Day.

Border Patrol officers with the public affairs office were sent to notify the media, which had gathered at the meeting point on Calleros Court and Santa Fe Street early Tuesday morning. The event was scheduled last minute by CBP Monday evening stating that the crowd control exercise would begin at the railroad crossing west of the Paso Del Norte Bridge at 10 a.m. on Election Day.

The area where the demonstration was slated to be held is in the heart of the Chihuahuita neighborhood in South El Paso. The neighborhood is a historically poor, Hispanic community that winds along the Rio Grande River.

Residents of the neighborhood are assigned to vote at the Armijo Recreation Center, 700 East 7th Street, about  a mile to the east of the demonstration. If residents were to walk to the polls, they would have to walk through the area of the CBP exercise.

Many voting rights advocacy groups including ACLU Texas and MALDEF raised immediate concerns that the exercise may have been purposefully scheduled for election day in an effort to intimidate and suppress voters from going to the polls.

Prior to official cancellation, armored units, horseback riders and other mobile units were driving on the street near Calleros Court.

After moving to a secured area behind the railroad tracks, Border Patrol officers emerged to notify the small gaggle of waiting reporters that the event was called off.

When directly asked by the Herald Post why the exercise was canceled at the last minute, public affairs officers said they were not given a reason. When pressed as to whether the pushback regarding the event falling on election day resulted in the last minute cancellation, he indicated it could be a fair assumption.

The exercise has not been rescheduled.

Photos by Steven Cottingham

 

House Republicans are aiming to meet President Trump’s latest request for his border wall — $5 billion for 2019 — setting up a potential showdown with the Senate.

The $5 billion would be included in a House homeland-security spending bill expected to be released Wednesday. The Senate included only $1.6 billion for the wall in its version of the bill last month, a figure that displeased Trump, who told senators he might shut down the government this fall if he does not get more.

Administration officials and House Republicans are holding discussions about the precise figure and what the money would be spent on. Trump never formally requested $5 billion for the wall, instead communicating the number privately to lawmakers in recent weeks.

Rep. Charles J. “Chuck” Fleischmann (R-Tenn.), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, said he anticipated $5 billion that would be allocated for “wall plus” — meaning physical barriers in some spots, as well as other security mechanisms in places along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border where a wall might not be practical.

He and other Republicans acknowledged it might be a struggle to get their number through the Senate. Members of the Senate Appropriations Committee have been writing their spending bills on a bipartisan basis this year, while House Republicans are proceeding on their own, without Democrats.

“It’s got to start somewhere, and if we start in the House and get that out there it gives us a starting point,” Fleischmann said. “You’ll at least have the House and the White House lined up.”

Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, said the $5 billion figure was a non-starter given numerous other needs in areas such as education and health care.

“That number is unacceptable. It’s unacceptable,” Lowey said.

Republican lawmakers hope to avoid a government shutdown. Current funding bills are set to expire Sept. 30, just ahead of the November midterm elections in which the GOP will try to keep control of Congress.

Thorny issues such as wall funding and an unrelated fight over spending on veterans may remain unresolved at that point, and lawmakers widely expect that Congress will have to pass a short-term funding extension to keep the government running through Election Day.

Author: ERICA WERNER, THE WASHINGTON POST

Three Central Americans detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border to seek asylum are suing the federal government over its now-reversed policy of separating them from their young children.

The lawsuit, filed by lawyers with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid on Wednesday, argues the Trump administration’s policy of separating immigrant youth from their parents — which the president pulled back on Wednesday under intense national pressure — was “designed, intended and administered as a means of deterring all immigration, even legal immigration by those with a right to seek asylum.” The parents are asking the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to reunite them with their children and rule that the U.S. government violated their constitutional rights.

“This is punishment, it interferes with family integrity, and it interferes with access to courts, all of which our Constitution’s Fifth Amendment does not allow,” the lawsuit states. “Families naturally experience forced separation as torture and they urge this Court to stop it.”

The parents suing the federal government are from Guatemala and Honduras and are housed in three different immigration detention centers throughout Texas — the El Paso Processing Center, the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Los Fresnos and the South Texas Family Residential Center near Dilley. The three parents had a total of five children separated from them after crossing the border; the kids range in age from 2 to 13.

It’s unclear whether or how the children will be united with their parents in light of Trump’s Wednesday announcement.

Early in the afternoon, the president signed an executive order reversing procedures that have sent more than 2,000 immigrant children to facilities separate from their parents. His “zero tolerance” immigration policy — which asserts that all adult immigrants caught crossing the border will be prosecuted — will remain in place, and it’s still unclear how families will be kept intact without sending kids to jail alongside their parents.

“We hope that the children are reunited with their parents at the soonest possible time,” said Jerome Wesevich, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. “Every minute that passes is intense anguish for these parents and their kids.” 

The U.S. Department of Justice didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

U.S. officials previously determined that one of the families in the lawsuit — a Guatemalan mother with three children, including a 2-year-old — had a credible fear of returning to their home country. Though the family sought asylum at a port of entry — the way the system is designed to work — the children were sent to New York while the mother stayed detained in Texas, according to the lawsuit.

The mother has not seen her children for more than a month. While she is occasionally allowed to talk to them on the phone, she has only heard her 2-year-old’s voice through cries, the lawsuit states.

The other two parents in the lawsuit do not know where their children are, how to contact them or how they will be reunited.

One of those parents, a Honduran man, was separated from his 12-year-old daughter after crossing the southern Texas border in Cameron County earlier this month, according to the complaint. He approached officials and said he was seeking asylum and had left Honduras after being shot in the shoulder and receiving death threats.

Shortly after arriving at the processing center in Brownsville, his daughter was taken to another room, and he was later informed they would be separated indefinitely, according to the complaint.

Another Guatemalan woman who’d been threatened in her home country had her 9-year-old son taken away from her after crossing the border near Presidio and approaching immigration officials at a nearby port of entry, the lawsuit states. The two were separated the next day, without being told why.

Those two parents were criminally convicted for entering the country illegally — i.e. not at the port of entry. They’re the type of border-crossers targeted by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, and they continue to be detained as they pursue asylum claims.

The Guatemalan mother of three who sought asylum at the port of entry should not have been separated from her children under the policy, according to Department of Homeland Security rules. Families that bring asylum claims legally at ports of entry can only separated if officials believe they aren’t actually related, if they worry the children are unsafe with the parents or if the adult is referred for criminal prosecution. It’s unclear if any of those conditions applied in this case.

When the mother’s children were sent to a facility in New York, immigration officials told her she would be detained in Texas because a judge needed to talk to her. She was told they would only be apart for a week at most. That was a month ago.

The woman said she has yet to be seen by a judge.

Read related Tribune coverage:

• Everything we know about Texas-regulated facilities holding migrant children: violations, numbers and more
• Donald Trump reverses course, signs an executive order to stop separating families
• On a bridge over the Rio Grande, immigrants seeking asylum wait for a chance to enter the U.S.

Authors:  PAUL COBLER AND JOLIE MCCULLOUGH – The Texas Tribune