Immigrant Parents Coerced By DHS, Signed Away Rights to Reunite With Children
"Lawyers Say DHS Tricked Undocumented Immigrants Into Signing Papers They Don’t Understand. Some parents unwittingly signed away their rights to be reunited with their children," Think Progress, Rebekah Entralgo, Aug. 23, '18.
Immigration authorities coerced roughly 76 immigrant parents separated from their children at the border into signing documents they couldn’t understand, according to a new complaint. In some cases, these parents signed away their rights to be reunited with their children and didn’t even know it.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council are expected to file this complaint on Thursday against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to the Associated Press.
Specifically, the complaint to the Department of Homeland Security’s Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and Inspector General claims several mothers were told by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers that if they didn’t sign the forms presented to them, they would never see their children again.
These parents mainly spoke Spanish or indigenous languages, yet were handed documents in English and given just a few minutes to make a decision. Immigration attorneys worry there is no way of knowing which parents willingly signed the paperwork and how many were coerced into doing so.
In one example, a Guatemalan mother was separated from her 5-year-old boy at the border and was told by an officer at a detention center in Port Isabel, Texas that she must sign a self-deportation document in order to see her son again.
The officer did not tell the woman what she was signing and threatened her with solitary confinement when she would not stop weeping for her child. She was eventually reunited with her child at a detention center in Dilley, Texas where they are currently being held. - More...
More, https://thinkprogress.org/immigration-lawyers-complaint-against-dhs-family-separation-immigration-470acb833f39/