Illegal immigrant parents not facing U.S.
prosecution for now
Send a link to a friend
[June 26, 2018]
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Parents who
cross illegally from Mexico to the United States with their children
will not face prosecution for the time being because the government is
running short of space to house them, officials said on Monday.
President Donald Trump's administration has vowed to prosecute all
adults who cross the border illegally but its policy of separating
immigrant children from parents met fierce international criticism so it
is now trying to keep detained families together while the parents await
trial.
That has created logistics problems of how to house those families, and
the Customs and Border Protection agency is now not referring new cases
for prosecution, CBP officials said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was not
dropping its policy of "zero-tolerance" of illegal immigration but it
needed a "temporary solution" until it can house migrant families.
"This will only last a short amount of time, because we’re going to run
out of space, we're going to run out of resources in order to keep
people together. And we're asking Congress to provide those resources
and do their job," Sanders told reporters.

A source at the CBP said it expects to soon resume the referrals for
prosecution and is still sending for prosecution those adults who are
caught crossing illegally and do not have children with them.
Trump faced a global outcry this month, including sharp criticism from
some inside his Republican Party, over migrant children being separated
from their parents.
He formally ended the policy of separating families last Wednesday, but
the administration has yet to reunite more than 2,000 children with
their parents and it is not clear how it will house thousands of
families while parents are prosecuted.
The U.S. military has been asked to prepare to house up to 20,000
unaccompanied child migrants on its bases.
Although Republicans control both chambers in Congress, disagreements
between moderates and conservatives in the party over immigration
matters have hit prospects for a speedy legislative fix to the border
crisis.
Mark Meadows, leader of a conservative faction among Republicans in the
House of Representatives, said on Monday he expected that an immigration
bill being worked on by Republicans would fail.
A group of Republican and Democratic senators huddled late on Monday to
see whether they might be able to come together on legislation
establishing a protocol for treating immigrant families as their pleas
for asylum or other protections from deportation are considered.
But after the meeting, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on
the Senate Judiciary Committee, said "Nothing’s going to happen this
week," on legislation in the Senate.
With Congress out of session next week for the July 4 public holiday,
that would mean the Senate could not debate a bill until at least the
following week.
[to top of second column]
|

A combination photo of President Donald Trump and Congresswoman
Maxine Waters. REUTERS/Leah Millis/Rebecca Cook

POLITICAL FIGHT
Trump has expressed frustration at U.S. immigration laws and
reiterated on Monday that people should be turned away at the
border. Democrats have accused him of wanting to circumvent the U.S.
constitution's guarantee of due process for those accused of crimes.
"We want a system where, when people come in illegally, they have to
go out. And a nice simple system that works," Trump told reporters.
The immigration crisis has triggered new political tension, and
Trump lashed out at a Democratic congresswoman who had urged
Americans to confront members of his inner circle in public places.
The lawmaker, Maxine Waters, told a crowd in her home state of
California on Sunday that a Virginia restaurant's refusal to serve
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders should be a model for
resisting Trump.
"If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a
department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create
a crowd," Waters said.
"And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome
anymore, anywhere. We've got to get the children connected to their
parents."
Trump fired back on Monday, calling Waters "an extraordinarily low
IQ person."
Last week, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was
confronted at a Mexican restaurant in Washington by protesters
yelling: "Shame! Shame!"
House of Representatives Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called for
cooler heads on both sides.


"Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are
predictable but unacceptable," she said. "As we go forward, we must
conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining
sea."
(Reporting by Yeganeh Torbati; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu
and Richard Cowan; Writing by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney
and Clarence Fernandez)
[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |