RETURN TO SENDER/ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

[HairOfTheDog]

I was looking for the validity of these reports and then came across something written by someone saying that we should not focus on looking for these children because they will just end up getting deported.

The person also said that these are not children that were separated from their parents-it is children that came up on their own or with someone else-they also said that they usually get released to be with a relative or they stay in a shelter.
They don't neccesarily have to be tracked after this point.

Again-I am still looking into the validity of this person's post-because I would love for it to be true, rather than kids being released to traffickers. They also said a number of children were trafficked in 2014-but laws have now gotten stricter. (I only hope this is true) But I somehow don't think it is.

Here's what I know from having followed the issue since 2013.

There are two categories of undocumented child immigrants: (1) accompanied minors,traveling with family into the U.S., and (2) unaccompanied minors, sent into the U.S. alone.

During Obama's term, immigration from Mexico declined to eventually a net zero (more were leaving than coming in). However, shit got extremely bad in Central America in terms of government corruption, poverty, violence and gangs.

Illegal border crossings from Mexico into the U.S. by Hondurans, Nicaraguans, and El Salvadorians therefore started rising significantly. Congress refused to take up immigration law and policy reform to come up with a bi-partisan plan for how to best handle the situation. Swift deportations hit a record high.

Tens of thousands of adults from the Central American countries then began sending their kids into the U.S. alone because they knew the kids couldn't be deported by themselves and would be placed with relatives in the U.S. until immigration court proceedings were held (in hopes that the U.S. courts would grant the kids legal protections or asylum here). There was a backlog and the hearings sometimes weren't scheduled for months.

When there were no known family members for unaccompanied immigrant minors, the children were placed in foster care with vetted Americans until their immigration court hearings.

It is true that some of the unaccounted-for or 'lost’ unaccompanied minors are missing on purpose because their U.S. family members or appointed custodians don't want to go to court and risk having having the kids deported back to what they'd fled.

However, it's also true and verified (and acknowledged by head of the Department of Homeland Security directly) that the level of vetting for legal custodians hasn't been very thorough and the agency's ability or effort to monitor the children after they were handed off, as required, has not been sufficient.

As a result, thousands of the unaccompanied child immigrants are unaccounted for and some ended up in the hands of traffickers. When the facts/numbers were recently made public, the Director of Homeland Security vowed to improve the vetting and monitoring processes. Like you, I hope that vow is sincere and kept.

What's happening now is that the Trump administration has just expanded the policy for unaccompanied immigrant children to include children who are with their families when they enter the U.S. illegally. The parents have no say in the matter -- their children are being taken from them after the long journey rather than going to immigration court proceedings together with their parents (as in the past).

The Trump administration policy expansion is designed to deter immigrant families from attempting to enter the U.S., according to Trump's Chief of Staff and the Director of the Department Homeland Security. It's causing a lot of heartache and desperation for some of these immigrant parents because U.S. immigration officials can't or won't tell them where their kids are located.

President Trump claimed recently that his hands are tied because the forced separation of children from their parents is based on a "horrible Democrat law". That's just another lie.