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The remarkable history of the family separation crisis
The forced separation of children from their parents upon trying to enter the US illegally has become, over the course of the past 96 hours, a massive national issue. A handful of congressional Democrats -- including Sens. Jeff Merkley (Oregon) and Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) -- visited a detention center in McAllen, Texas, on Sunday, drawing even more attention to the issue. And President Donald Trump launched a tweetstorm Monday morning regarding forced separation; "It is the Democrats fault for being weak and ineffective with Boarder Security and Crime," he tweeted. "Tell them to start thinking about the people devastated by Crime coming from illegal immigration. Change the laws!"
The issue has risen so rapidly -- and so quickly become a political football -- that many people, me included, have struggled to decipher who's telling the truth, who's not and how to solve this problem. For answers, I reached out to Doris Meissner, the director of the US immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. Meissner is also a former commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where she served from 1993-2000.
Cillizza: Prior to Donald Trump taking over as President, what was the policy toward undocumented immigrants entering the country with small children?
Meissner: Before the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, families arriving at the border without authorization to enter but claiming a credible fear if returned home were permitted to enter to apply for asylum. Whether or not they were detained while applying for asylum depended on a series of court rulings and legislation, in addition to the availability of detention bed space.
A 1997 court settlement agreed to by the US government in a case called Flores v. Reno, which remains in effect today, requires the government to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to, in order of preference, parents, other adult relatives or licensed programs willing to accept custody. If children cannot be released, Flores requires the government to hold them in the "least restrictive" setting available. The 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, signed by President George W. Bush, codified parts of the settlement into federal law....
The issue has risen so rapidly -- and so quickly become a political football -- that many people, me included, have struggled to decipher who's telling the truth, who's not and how to solve this problem. For answers, I reached out to Doris Meissner, the director of the US immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute. Meissner is also a former commissioner at the Immigration and Naturalization Service, where she served from 1993-2000.
Cillizza: Prior to Donald Trump taking over as President, what was the policy toward undocumented immigrants entering the country with small children?
Meissner: Before the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, families arriving at the border without authorization to enter but claiming a credible fear if returned home were permitted to enter to apply for asylum. Whether or not they were detained while applying for asylum depended on a series of court rulings and legislation, in addition to the availability of detention bed space.
A 1997 court settlement agreed to by the US government in a case called Flores v. Reno, which remains in effect today, requires the government to release children from immigration detention without unnecessary delay to, in order of preference, parents, other adult relatives or licensed programs willing to accept custody. If children cannot be released, Flores requires the government to hold them in the "least restrictive" setting available. The 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, signed by President George W. Bush, codified parts of the settlement into federal law....
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politics/donald-trump-immigration-policies-q-and-a/index.html
Interesting history of a complex problem, yet Trump continues to cry that this is all Obama's fault.