Did you know that the Obama Administration was slapped down by a federal judge and a federal appellate court for "punishing" illegal immigrants by caging kids, separating families, and detaining asylees?
A federal judge in California ruled in 2015 that the Obama administration was in violation of the settlement when it tried to jail families together. The judge also said children could be held for no longer than 20 days.
Dolly M. Gee rejected arguments made by the Obama administration, as did the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-seeks-court-approval-to-detain-families-together-1529610123?tesla=y&mod=article_inline
As Central American children flooded into Texas in a way he had never seen in his three-decade career, Border Patrol agent Robert Harris decided to experiment.
His intelligence analysts estimated that 78 percent of the guides smuggling other migrants were Mexicans younger than 18 — often hired or conscripted by drug cartels that knew they would not be prosecuted if caught — and he wanted to attack this loophole.
“Why don’t we remove these juveniles from the smuggling cycle?” Harris, the commander of the Laredo sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, recalled thinking.
As a result of that decision, young Mexicans were being held for months without charge in shelters across the United States, sometimes without their parents’ knowledge.
Since the program began in May, 536 juveniles were held — 248 of whom were deported to Mexico after an average stay of 75 days, according to Border Patrol statistics.
Mexican authorities say some of these repeat border-crossers spent as much as six months in U.S. custody while they awaited an appearance before an immigration judge.
During their detention, they were questioned by U.S. authorities and then transferred to a network of facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, across 15 states.
Harris said the Border Patrol does not have a system to track what happens to juveniles once they return to Mexico.
In the past, Mexican minors picked up by the Border Patrol normally would be deported by bus, sometimes on the same day they arrived. Some of those kids were captured more than 60 times, and Obama’s officers identified about 800 young Mexicans operating in Texas.
Obama's program began in two Border Patrol sectors, Laredo and Del Rio, consisting of nearly 400 miles of the Texas border with Mexico. “The moment it started, it took us all by surprise, because there wasn't an announcement,” said Reyna Torres Mendívil, director general of the Mexican Foreign Ministry’s office for protection of Mexicans abroad. “Where were they taking these children?”
Typically, unless there are aggravating circumstances, they won’t be prosecuted. So this period of detention is intended to be a punishment in lieu of a criminal charge.
The shelters they are sent to also house juveniles from Central America, awaiting flights home; last year, the Mexican kids accounted for about 1 percent of all the detainees in these facilities.
Oscar Jaime Rodriguez Mendoza, a 16-year-old from the border town of Reynosa, left for the United States and didn’t come home. “We didn’t know what had happened to him,” said his mother, Leonor Mendoza, a 37-year-old clothing vendor.
She finally learned that he had been sent to a shelter in California. “It’s a type of punishment so they won’t cross as much” his mother said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/mexican-kids-held-for-months-as-punishment-for-border-crossing/2015/03/10/311d319a-b2f2-11e4-bf39-5560f3918d4b_story.html?noredirect=on[
