I read the status report. It’s:

- 283 children whose parents have not been found.
- 187 children whose parents have been found, but who have not been successfully contacted.
- 75 children whose parents have not been found, but telephonic outreach is expected to be successful.
The status report from today makes clear that this claim from Miles Taylor is completely wrong.

283 children remain whose parents, after “time-consuming and arduous on-the-ground searches,” cannot be found and for whom telephonic outreach is not expected be successful.
Setting aside that @MilesTaylorUSA misunderstood what today’s story was about, I want to talk about this a little more, though, because it reflects a narrative that people at DHS often used at the time reunification began—that many parents willingly gave up their kids.

Thoughts:
First, many of the families still separated were from people subject to family separation during the El Paso Pilot Project.

Over 1,000 families broken apart before the nation even heard the term “Zero Tolerance.”

The process of reunifying these families has been more difficult.
By the time Judge Sabraw ordered family reunification, more than 1,000 parents had already been deported.

Around 2,000 were still in an ICE jail and waiting for court hearings.

But hundreds more had been ordered deported and were still in ICE custody. So what happened to them?
For those parents who had already been ordered deported, ICE gave them a “choice.”

- Be reunited and deported together, even if it means your child has to give up on asylum, or;
- Agree to give up your child, letting them have a chance at safety in the US.
Can you imagine the thoughts going through a parent’s mind?

The only way to reunite with your child is if you agree to take them back to the terrible situation you both fled from.

It’s no wonder some parents signed away their rights. But it gets even worse!
Some parents, when presented with that ICE form, didn’t know what they were signing.

That’s right—some parents were coerced by ICE into signing a form which gave up their rights to reunite with their kids.

How do I know? Because I talked to many of them as this happened! Excerpts from a declaration I wrote in 2018 regarding coerci
After I came back from El Paso, we poured our efforts @immcouncil into a comprehensive complaint detailing all the coercion used by ICE to get people to sign away their rights. We uncovered so many terrible stories.

americanimmigrationcouncil.org/news/complaint…
What about all those parents deported before reunification, though?

Well, many of them have been found. And some have made the extraordinarily difficult choice, given no other options, not to ask for reunification because it might mean taking their child back to danger.
So that takes us back to this tweet, which, again, misunderstood the story.

Yes, some parents HAVE chosen not to “claim” their child—because we’ve never offered a truly fair choice. We’ve never really tried to provide recompense for a lifetime of nightmares.

I hope we do.
Adding to this thread, given that Taylor deleted his original tweet.

This statement from the White House makes the exact same mistake that Taylor did—and suggests a similarly incomplete understanding of how and why some parents have chosen not to reunify.

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More from @ReichlinMelnick

20 Oct
NEW! The criminal bars to asylum proposed in December 2019 are finally here.

The rule will impose sweeping new asylum bans for people convicted of misdemeanor crimes as minor as using a fake ID—something millions of American college students do every day.
public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2020-23159.pdf
The new criminal bars to asylum, which include not only minor misdemeanor crimes, but even situations where an immigration judge "has reason to believe" someone committed domestic violence—even if never arrested or convicted—will go into effect 30 days from tomorrow: November 20.
DHS/EOIR acknowledge that this new asylum bar—based an immigration judge having "reason to believe" an applicant has ever committed domestic battery—doesn't even require an arrest.

Immigration attorneys better prepare for mini trials, and start exercising subpoena authority.
Read 6 tweets
19 Oct
It always amuses me how confidently @RMConservative talks about immigration law while displaying how little he actually knows about it.

This article is journalistic malpractice. It gets the facts wrong, the background wrong, the law wrong, and the legal questions wrong.
Let's start with the facts he got wrong. Horowitz claims Pereida was convicted of "stealing the identity of a citizen" to get a job in Iowa.

Except he wasn't. The job was in Nebraska (despite biz having Iowa in name) and he was convicted of *attempted* "criminal impersonation." Excerpt from Blaze article: "Mexican citizen Clemente PExcerpt from Eighth Circuit opinion: "Pereida pleaded n
Here's more of the sloppiness: Horowitz claims that "Even without stealing identity [sic], he came here illegally and should have no legal standing to remain in the country."

Except that's literally not how it works. For generations, Congress has created paths to avoid removal. Excerpt from Blaze piece: "Even without stealing identi
Read 5 tweets
10 Oct
! We just learned that after the Border Patrol “assisted” this woman, they took her to the hospital where her baby went into the NICU.

Then, hours after she gave birth, the Border Patrol threw her in a jail cell and are threatening to send her to Mexico without her baby—tonight!
Here’s more information about this developing situation.
We now have @mollymotoole’s story.

This woman had already been victimized by the Trump administration and sent back to Mexico under the Orwellian “Migrant Protection Protocols.”

Those have been indefinitely suspended since March. She was desperate. latimes.com/politics/story…
Read 4 tweets
24 Sep
Wolf is making things up again. Here's what @DHSOIG said in 2005 about why Congress created ICE.

"ICE was established not with a focus on supporting a particular mission but rather on building an institutional foundation large enough to justify a new organization." Image
The entire OIG analysis from 2005 is amazing. Here's what OIG offered as one official's theory for why ICE was created in the first place—interior immigration enforcement alone would never "attain bureaucratic critical mass," so they threw a bunch of other things into the pot. ImageImage
The 2005 OIG report is worth a read. It assessed whether CBP and ICE should be merged back into one immigration agency.

OIG said merger was "the optimal solution" with "almost universal" support among employees, most of whom used to work for INS. oig.dhs.gov/assets/Mgmt/OI… Image
Read 4 tweets
24 Sep
🚨 New! A.G. Barr takes ANOTHER whack at the asylum process, issuing a new precedential decision in Matter of A-C-A-A-, 28 I&N Dec. 84 (A.G. 2020) and giving both immigration judges and the BIA more leeway to deny asylum claims.

justice.gov/eoir/page/file… Image
Before I go through this latest attack on the asylum process, please enjoy a picture of Petra, who is a Very Good Cat. I hope this softens the blow a tiny bit. Image
A.G. Barr begins his decision (issued under authority to set precedent in immigration court) by basically saying that the Board of Immigration Appeals hasn't been digging deeply enough in every single case to find ways to deny people asylum. It's hard to read it otherwise. Image
Read 9 tweets
24 Sep
Under DHS's new proposed rule, if you were born in, or are a citizen of, one of the countries on this map, you would be banned from getting a four-year degree in the United States, with a student visa limited to two years maximum.

The thread has all the countries.
Rather than have people dig through the threads to get to the original rationale, here's the relevant provision I built this map off of.

The vast majority of these countries would be banned from 4-year-degrees based on this overstay provision.

It's collective punishment.
Here's a thread I did on some of the other changes made by the rule, which was published this morning.

People who want to oppose the rule will be able to provide comments in opposition to the rule, starting tomorrow and lasting through 10/25/2020.

Read 10 tweets

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