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NY Times, May 14 2016
U.S. Will Step Up Deportations, Focusing on Central Americans
By JULIA PRESTON
Brushing aside protests from immigrant advocates and both Democratic
presidential candidates, the Obama administration is moving ahead with a
surge of deportations in the coming weeks, aimed mainly at mothers and
children from Central America, immigration officials said Friday.
The Department of Homeland Security is stepping up the pace of
deportations to send a tough enforcement message to Central America and
to try to head off a seasonal swell of illegal crossings of the
southwest border, the officials said. Those crossings generally rise
during the summer, and administration officials are especially concerned
because there was an unexpected increase in the numbers of migrants last
fall.
The new plans do not include intensive raids like those over one weekend
in January, when about 120 women and children were detained for
deportation in Georgia, North Carolina and Texas, the officials said.
Instead, immigration agents will speed up the arrests of individual
families, which they have been making nationwide since the January raids.
Marsha Catron, a spokeswoman for the department, said those operations
focus on migrants who were caught at the border after Jan. 1, 2014,
denied asylum by immigration courts, and ordered deported by judges.
Agents also will arrest migrants who came when they were minors but
turned 18 while fighting deportation in the courts, making them
ineligible for protections as children.
“We must enforce the law consistent with our priorities,” Ms. Catron said.
The deportation plan, first reported on Thursday by Reuters, drew
immediate outrage from advocates and from Democrats in Congress and in
the presidential campaign.
“I’m against large-scale raids that tear families apart and sow fear in
communities,” Hillary Clinton said in a statement. She said families
from Central America “should be given a full opportunity to seek relief.”
Her rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said, “I oppose the
painful and inhumane business of locking up and deporting families who
have fled horrendous violence in Central America and other countries.”
Representative Lucille Roybal-Allard of California, in a statement
joined by other House Democrats, said, “To conduct these enforcement
actions against women and children who have fled violence, and who will
face violence if they are returned, is not just hypocritical, it is
plain cruel.”
Despite the wrath of their allies, administration officials are worried
they could face another uncontrolled summer influx, like the one in
2014. That could further tarnish President Obama’s mixed legacy on
immigration and inflame the volatile presidential campaign, where the
presumptive Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, has called for
construction of a wall along the border with Mexico and the deportation
of 11 million immigrants here illegally.
Illegal border crossings dropped during the first two months of the year
but have risen recently. According to Border Patrol statistics, the
apprehension of families at the southwest border from October 2015 to
March increased 131 percent over the same six-month period a year
earlier — to 32,117 migrants — while the detention of unaccompanied
children increased 78 percent, to 27,754.
Many women and children said they were running from murderous violence
by gangs, especially in El Salvador and Honduras, where criminal
organizations control city barrios and have expanded their reach into
rural villages. The families applied for asylum, but the vast majority —
86 percent, according to a report by the Transactional Records Access
Clearinghouse, a group that studies federal data — went to court without
lawyers. Court records show that asylum seekers have a very low chance
of success without lawyers.
In some cases, advocates succeeded in stopping deportations at the last
minute by providing legal counsel to the families.
But the Homeland Security secretary, Jeh Johnson, has made it clear he
wants people in Central America to know there is no open border.
“Our highest priority is public safety and border security,” Ms. Catron,
the spokeswoman, said.
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