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.@AOC says #Facebook posts and child separation show @CBP has “dehumanizing culture.” dailysign.al/2JGiuUt via @FredLucasWH @DailySignal
“The incendiary and overwrought attacks on the men and women securing our border and enforcing immigration laws in the interior are unwarranted and damaging,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said in opening remarks.
McAleenan called on members of Congress to calm the rhetoric targeting agents who work for Customs and Border Protection or for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, both parts of the Department of Homeland Security.
“The demonization of law enforcement professionals, U.S. Border Patrol agents, CBP and ICE officers of all racial and ethnic backgrounds, from all faiths and callings, who had chosen a career about protecting others, must stop,” McAleenan said in his prepared remarks.
He noted that Border Patrol agents face difficult challenges, having encountered more than 800,000 migrants crossing the southern border since Oct. 1, and 90% of them not using an official port of entry.
More than 450,000 of those apprehended since October were members of family units and more than 80,000 were unaccompanied children, McAleenan said. The total of 300,000 children is almost as many as all those of all ages apprehended in fiscal year 2017, he said.
Still, critics, including members of Congress, have compared immigration authorities and detention facilities to those who ran concentration camps, or death camps, for Nazi Germany.
McAleenan asked that Congress close legal loopholes in the immigration system so that DHS can keep migrant families together while their cases are being adjudicated.
In 1997, the Clinton administration entered into a legal pact called the Flores Settlement Agreement to end a class action lawsuit first brought in the 1980s.
The settlement established a policy that the federal government would release unaccompanied border-crossing minors to their parents, relatives, or other caretakers after no more than 20 days—or, alternatively, determine the “least restrictive” setting for a child.
In a separate development, the Democrat-controlled Congress in 2008 approved bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking called the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which President George W. Bush, a Republican, signed into law.
Section 235(g) of that law states that unaccompanied minors entering the U.S. must be transferred to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, rather than to the Department of Homeland Security.
In 2016, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit expanded the Flores settlement to include children brought to the country illegally by their parents.
For consistency between the anti-trafficking law and the 9th Circuit’s interpretation of the Flores agreement, officials decided that children who came into the country illegally with parents had to be taken into HHS custody.
“Why would an agency, if they had a deficit of empathy, create a border search, trauma and rescue team to try to protect people who are trying to make this dangerous crossing?” McAleenan answered.
“We make over 4,000 rescues a year on their own time with the collateral duty applied to the emergency medical technicians, so they can help people in dangerous conditions,” McAleenan said.
“Where is the deficit of empathy there? These are predominantly Latino Border Patrol agents. They have children of their own and they are out there trying to protect them, putting their lives on the line.”
