Houston Chronicle by Lomi Kriel June 9, 2018
With dozens of other illegal border crossers last week, Santiago Choc Chomo filed into the downtown federal courtroom here, focused not on his misdemeanor charge but on his 10-year-old daughter. There’s a new law, Border Patrol agents told him when they found the two near the Rio Grande River. You’re going to jail, they said. She’s going to a federal shelter.
But they did not tell him where.
Along with Choc Chomo, as many as 70 immigrants at a time filled nearly all the wooden benches in this eighth-floor court, still wearing the same jeans and hooded sweatshirts they were in when apprehended days before.
Under the U.S. government’s new “zero tolerance†strategy of prosecuting every migrant entering the country illegally, many of them were parents separated from their children after being imprisoned for the crime. Most had never been in the United States before and sat, shackled and terrified, with one overriding concern.
“All I could think about was my daughter,†Choc Chomo said.
This Rio Grande Valley region is the epicenter of President Donald Trump’s latest controversial immigration policy, a hardline approach to curbing illegal immigration that has met resistance from even some Republicans. More than half of all migrant families and children apprehended at the southern border wade across the river near McAllen and since mid-May, public defenders here said more than 430 parents have been separated from their children while facing prosecution.
The United Nations has condemned the practice, but the administration said the strategy is necessary to handle a “crisis†at the border. Though overall illegal crossings are at their lowest in decades, new statistics last week show that the number of families and children coming here rose another 14 percent in May to almost 16,000, reaching levels last seen during President Barack Obama’s administration. The total amount of migrants apprehended at the southern border or turning themselves in to ports of entry remained at more than 50,000 for the third consecutive month.
The increase has infuriated the president, who took pride in the falling apprehensions after his inauguration and boasted on his 500th day in office last week that some of his major accomplishments were lower illegal immigration and stronger borders.
“While the Trump administration is restoring the rule of law, it will take a sustained effort and continuous commitment of resources over many months,†Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Q. Houlton said in a statement. “No one expects to reverse years of political inaction overnight.â€
To accommodate the resulting surge in detentions, the administration announced late Thursday that it would send 1,600 immigrants from civil holding facilities run by Homeland Security to federal prisons, a decision advocates said was alarming. It comes as the government is also considering housing children on military bases, including in Texas, as federal shelters for unaccompanied minors reach capacity.
More:
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/New-zero-tolerance-policy-overwhelms-South-12981190.php
