Garland's Disjointed Thoughts on Immigration
By Robert Law on February 24, 2021
On Monday, February 22, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland, the Biden administration's nominee to serve as attorney general. While senators pressed Garland on a broad array of issues that fall under the Department of Justice's responsibility, his responses on immigration questions were disjointed and suggest an absence of meaningful knowledge of U.S. immigration law.
Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) used part of his time focusing on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy, which was announced by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in April 2018. Under the "zero tolerance" policy, all U.S. attorney's offices along the Southwest border were directed to prosecute all Department of Homeland Security referrals of section 1325(a) of the United States Code. That section of immigration law prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien. In applying this policy, adult aliens were referred for prosecution while any minor aliens who they arrived at the border with were put in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. Critics derided this as "family separation" and the "zero tolerance" policy was short-lived. Chairman Durbin's question was specifically about conducting oversight into the origin and application of the "zero tolerance" policy, in response to which Garland affirmed his commitment to oversight. Then, unprompted, Garland added, "I think that the policy was shameful. I can't imagine anything worse than tearing parents from their children, and we will provide all the cooperation that we possibly can."
https://cis.org/Law/Garlands-Disjointed-Thoughts-Immigration
