Salvadoran sisters Noeli, 15, and Valeria, 12, hoped to begin immigration proceedings and reunite with their mother in Maryland after five years aside when they crossed the U. S. -Mexico border in August with their brother Joshua, 23. Mexico.
Grabriela, 13, hoping to seek asylum when she reached the Texas border in April, just as her mother had done years before when she fled gangs in El Salvador, but after being detained by US officials, the woman was detained in a hotel and placed on a deportation flight.
After waiting months in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, subjected to violence over her hearing in a U. S. court, Elida allowed her 12-year-old son, Gustavo, to report to U. S. border authorities, thinking she would be allowed to meet her grandfather in South Carolina. Instead, Gustavo, a largely nonverbal child suffering from physical and learning disabilities, deported to Guatemala alone.
By mid-March, these young migrants were reportedly housed in shelters and allowed to seek asylum or other U. S. shrine bureaucracy with lawyers, but their rapid deportations of the United States are part of the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to use the COVID 19 pandemic as a justification for circumventing legal protections for minors arriving at U. S. borders without documents.
By designating them as threats to public fitness that may simply spread the virus, the Trump administration has deported at least 8,800 unaccompanied migrant children, some as young as 10, without a court hearing or asylum review, avoiding the safeguards created by Congress for them against trafficking. exploitation and persecution.
In total, more than 204,000 of these evictions have been carried out on the U. S. -Mexico border since March, according to data.
Senior law enforcement officials on President Trump’s immigration law have described the emergency policy as strictly public domain and approved through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
However, the White House and senior adviser Stephen Miller pressured the CDC to enforce the order, eluding objections from agency experts who believed there was no public aptitude base to invoke a 1940s law to close U. S. borders to migrants, adding asylum seekers and children. CBS News 3 former Trump management members were told familiar with the discussions. Officials were given anonymity to speak candidly about internal deliberations.
“We were forced to do so,” a former public fitness official told CBS News. “We’ve exhausted allArray. We’re late. We’ve slowed down. We have categorically said that there is no public justification for physical fitness. We said no. ” And then they said, “Do it. ” Then, at the end of the day, you must resign in protest or point it out. And if you resign in protest, the next user will do it anyway. “
According to two of the former members, experts in the career of the CDC’s Quarantine and Global Migration Division, which would have jurisdiction over border measures to involve the virus, refused to be involved in the deportation order. through Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) attorney Brian Stimson, a political member. An HHS spokesman said “career lawyers and politicians” who serve as CDC attorneys were concerned that the order was a “public and legal aptitude problem. “
After growing tension in the White House, a call from Vice President Mike Pence, CDC Director Robert Redfield signed the board, which took effect on March 20. Katie Miller, Pence’s spokesperson who is married to Miller, denied that vice president “was leading the CDC on this issue. “
“It was one of the many complicated options we were forced to make, and in the end the White House and its preference prevailed,” a former public fitness official told CBS News at one point. “The public fitness authority had never been used in this Many people, myself included, felt that it was an improper appropriation of this authority. “
First, CDC officials were able to “reduce” the order so that it had to be reauthorized every 30 days. In May, after two renovations, the order was extended indefinitely. the cdc director determines that “the danger of a new arrival of COVID-19 in the United States has ceased to be a serious danger. “
“I assure you that in this administration, this will never happen,” said one of the former public fitness officials. “It will take a new administration, a new director to come and say, “It’s silly, I’m throwing it away. “”
For the first time, Joe Biden’s crusade announced Sunday that the former vice president would order a policy review if elected. “A Biden management would direct the CDC and DHS to review this policy and make the necessary adjustments so that others have the ability to submit their refugee claims while ensuring that we take adequate safety precautions for COVID- 19, as directed by science and public fitness experts, “Crusade spokeswoman Pili Tobar told CBS News.
The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal also reported on the White House crusade to cancel CDC that opposed the border deportation order.
On March 27, seven days after the CDC order came into effect, Chad Mizelle, the lead attorney for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), sent a memorandum to Ken Cuccinelli, the department’s second-in-command, proposing an additional eligibility limit for refugees in the pandemic, according to documents received through the Human First Group under the Freedom of Information Act.
In a statement through the White House, Redfield said that “knowledge indicated a threat to COVID-19’s public suitability for illegal immigrants and CPB workers at the border” when the deportation policy was discussed. “I decided it was in the public interest at the time to factor the order and that was a resolution I made as director of the CDC,” Redfield added. “CDC continues to evaluate the border scenario and our long-term resolutions will also be guided through science and knowledge at border locations. “
A White House spokesman said the policy had “saved countless American lives across protective border states, adding Texas and Arizona, from overflowing their hospitals and border patrol agents from infections. “The Customs and Border Protection Office (CBP) has also defended it.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has made the decision that the advent and spread of COVID-19 at CBP stations and transitional detention facilities pose a danger to illegal border workers, our frontline officials and officials, doctors and nurses, and the U. S. Public,” the firm told CBS News. “It would only take a small number of other people with COVID-19 to infect a large number of CBP inmates and staff and potentially overwhelm local fitness systems along the border. “
When asked in an interview with CBS News in September why U. S. immigration officials were not able to do so. But it’s not the first time They may not exclude unaccompanied youth from deportation policy, Cuccinelli said: “You don’t get benefits from a public fitness order if you fill it with exceptions. “
“The regulations are clear. Cases are ordinary because of COVID, even because other people travel illegally,” Cuccinelli said. “I don’t know why anyone would expect more than a quick return from this country when they knowingly cross, illegally, regardless of their age.
Children who have walked with permission on American soil have long enjoyed more legal protections.
In 2008, President George W. Bush signed the Bipartisan Law on the Reauthorization of Protection of Victims of Trafficking, which requires all government agencies to temporarily transfer unrecompanied non-Mexican migrant youth to the Refugee Resettlement Office and its shelter network. Young Mexicans can be transferred to the Mexican government after being proven not to be trafficked or persecuted.
While in the custody of the refugee agency, which is an HHS department, young people are connected with lawyers and, in some cases, with child advocates. Unlike adults, they come from accelerated deportations and possibly their applications for shelter will be attempted through officials trained to hear humanitarian coverage claims, rather than before an immigration makes a trial in an adverse courtroom.
In addition to asylum, which is humanitarian coverage that opposes persecution, young migrants would possibly also be eligible to legalize their prestige in the United States through visas for abandoned, abused or abandoned minors.
While young migrants face deportation proceedings, the government is guilty of permanently releasing them through beating them with sponsors, who are members of the circle of relatives living in the United States, protections established in U. S. law, and historical flower court regulations.
Trump’s leadership has denounced the patch of legal guarantees, arguing that protections inspire young people in poor and violent Central American spaces to travel north with the help of smugglers, through other policies, management has sought to dismantle it.
But the government had never suspended those protections, until now. Citing the pandemic, the Trump administration has argued that young migrants are not entitled to those promises and that the legislation that created them is inoperative as long as THE CDC’s orders remain in effect. .
The administration has even detained the legal term “unaccompanied foreign children” for migrant minors detained through the border government without their parents and placed in deportation proceedings. Officials have called them “single minors,” a replacement aimed at reducing the “risk of civil liability,” “according to CBP documents received through Human Rights First.
Two federal judges have questioned the legality of deportation policy, saying the government harmonizes public aptitude law with legal guarantees created through Congress for migrant children.
“The Trump administration’s use of public fitness legislation to summarily deport young people without a hearing is evidently illegal, as concluded by the two judges who investigated the matter,” Lee Gelernt suggested to the American Civil Liberties Union that challenges the deportation order in court, he said. CBS News.
Citing the CDC’s order, the U. S. government has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time He returned 6,500 uncompanied young people to Mexico. Hundreds of unaccompanied youths and families were also detained in border hotels through U. S. officials seeking to deport them through deportation flights until a federal ruling banned the practice in September. bring limited access to lawyers.
In recent weeks, the border government has allowed more uncompanied youth to remain in the United States. The Office of Refugee Resettlement hosted 1,218 migrant children in September, up from 39 in May. Its incarcerated population has increased to about 2,000, having dropped to 800 in the summer.
Lawyers who accumulate in references to the US refugee firm are in the process of being able to do so. But it’s not the first time They are due to their efforts to avoid the deportations of the young people they can locate, as well as the court’s ban on detention in hotels, which hinders DHS’s ability to space children awaiting deportation.
The United States, however, continues to deport unaccompanied children. In October, Guatemala, the largest source of non-Mexican migration to the southern border of the United States, said it had received 407 unaccompanied deportees and minors, up from 230 in September and 254 in August, and arrests of unaccompanied minors on the U. S. -Mexico border have increased since spring, reaching nearly 4,000 in September.
Supporters are concerned that the U. S. government will continue to cite public fitness to deport them.
“The policies followed throughout the administration, aimed at combating COVID-19, are based on totally false justifications,” News told CBS News Kennji Kizuka, lead researcher at Human Rights First. “They have nothing to do with protecting public health and all that. “to do with preventing asylum seekers and uncompanied youth from obtaining the protections that Congress has created for them. “
After being returned by the U. S. border government, Noeli, Valeria and Joshua, the Salvadoran brothers deported, were moved through Mexico through the immigration government there, and ended up in a government facility in the southern state of Veracruz.
Evelin, his mother in Maryland, said he had desperately made as many calls as he could and had nevertheless contacted a Salvadoran consular official in Veracruz who helped facilitate the release of his sons and sent his daughters back to the U. S. border. Evelin said they would not be safe in El Salvador, where they do not have an immediate circle of relatives to look at them. Evelin said his adult son, Joshua, had not crossed paths with them for fear that this would lead to the deportation of his brothers to Mexico.
In a phone call at 2 a. m. , Evelin said U. S. officials had told her that her daughters would be deported back, this time to El Salvador, but with the Young Center for the Rights of Immigrant Children and other U. S. -based advocates, the women were being transferred to the U. S. refugee agency and spent a month in two Texas shelters before being released in Evelin on June 24. September.
“I was very moved to see them back,” Evelin told CBS News in Spanish. “It was my struggle to see them back and make sure nothing happened to them in El Salvador. I’m glad to have you here. How did they send them to Mexico like that?Much there, down, the journey, in front of hunger. “
Despite their reports in Mexico, Evelin’s daughters are among the lucky few. They are the young migrants discovered through a network of “clandestine railways” of immigration lawyers, human rights activists and youth advocates who guided humanitarian border policies.
“Young migrants facing deportation have no chance of being allowed to remain in the United States without legal representation,” News Taylor Levy, an immigration attorney in El Paso, told CBS News Taylor Levy. “I worked on the case of a teenager fleeing death threats after the murder of his resident uncle; He was deported a few hours before we contacted the government after learning about his case, without having had the opportunity to apply for asylum. “
Gabriela, the 13-year-old girl deported to El Salvador, hides from gangs, according to Texas Civil Rights Project attorneys who are in communication with her New York-based mother. The well-known nonprofit in Texas filed a lawsuit in federal court in June, Gabriela returned to the United States, but the case has stagnated.
Meanwhile, Gustavo, the 12-year-old disabled boy, is back in Petén, one of Guatemala’s poorest regions where local government cannot or cannot prevent violent crime.
Gustavo’s parents were never informed through U. S. officials of their son’s deportation. They said he was placed through a Facebook post and from the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Advocates Legal Center. “He didn’t deserve that,” Gustavo’s father, Juan, told CBS News in Spanish. .
Juan, a farmer, said he did know how to escape the vicious cycle of poverty that traps many deficient Guatemalans. Now that Gustavo is back, Juan said he was also afraid for his son’s safety and mentioned the recent roadside murders of two members of his family. Family.
“We have no security here. The government is not doing anything in our country,” John said. “Here they kill for anything. That’s why we’re for a safer country. “
Hundreds of miles away, Elida wept as she recounted her resolve to let Gustavo cross the U. S. border while she was staying in Ciudad Juarez, where she said she was nearly kidnapped and awaits her asylum hearing in the United States, which has been postponed indefinitely due to the pandemic.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do, ” said Elida in sobs, “I don’t need to be here without my son. “