After outraging Americans and the international community by holding thousands of children hostage in an effort to push through President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration policy, the Trump administration is again using children who have been taken from their parents as pawns — to get detained immigrants to agree to their own deportations and drop their asylum cases.
Another immoral Trump strategy: holding kids hostage to get refugees to drop asylum request! https://t.co/TDZFSnYFqp
— Senator Jeff Merkley (@SenJeffMerkley) June 24, 2018
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a fact sheet over the weekend stating that detained parents who sign a so-called “voluntary departure order” — paperwork that simply expedites deportation — can be reunited with their children.
“A parent who is ordered removed from the US may request that his or her minor child accompany them,” according to DHS — but critics and immigrant rights advocates have noted that presenting this possibility to parents who have been put through a traumatizing ordeal, is akin to kidnapping children and then using them as bait to get immigrants out of the country.
jfc. ICE is reportedly dangling family reunification as an incentive to drop asylum claims.
They’re telling parents they can be reunited w/ their kids at the airport — but only if they sign a voluntary order to be deported back to the country they fled.https://t.co/F5biikXa0d
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) June 25, 2018
Immigration lawyers are highly skeptical that these agreements will be honored. (The Trump admin has already deported many parents w/o their kids).
It really looks like they’re tricking people into dropping their asylum claims by using their kids as bait.https://t.co/h9DD43StX7
— Caroline O. (@RVAwonk) June 25, 2018
“We have no reason to believe that [voluntary deportation] is the fastest way for parents to be reunited with their children,” Efrén Olivares, an attorney with the Texas Civil Rights Project, told reporters on Sunday. “Putting them in that position is not a voluntary [deportation]; it’s being obtained under duress.”
MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff reported that many parents do sign the paperwork after being told that doing so will bring them a step closer to seeing their children — even if it means the family will be sent back to the country they left in the hopes of seeking asylum, often fleeing violence and political unrest.
“I was told I would not be deported without my daughter,” one 24-year-old father told the Texas Tribune. “I signed it out of desperation … but the truth is I can’t go back to Honduras; I need help.”
The man was hoping to revoke the order and appeal court’s decision that he was not eligible for asylum.
Other parents have opted not to sign the orders, putting themselves at risk for being deported on their own — and potentially never seeing their children again.
“Voluntary.”
What’s being done in our name — in the name of the people of the United States — is sickening. https://t.co/P4zZZVvlaN— James Gleick (@JamesGleick) June 24, 2018
Angry, shocked, overwhelmed? Take action: Support independent media.
We’ve borne witness to a chaotic first few months in Trump’s presidency.
Over the last months, each executive order has delivered shock and bewilderment — a core part of a strategy to make the right-wing turn feel inevitable and overwhelming. But, as organizer Sandra Avalos implored us to remember in Truthout last November, “Together, we are more powerful than Trump.”
Indeed, the Trump administration is pushing through executive orders, but — as we’ve reported at Truthout — many are in legal limbo and face court challenges from unions and civil rights groups. Efforts to quash anti-racist teaching and DEI programs are stalled by education faculty, staff, and students refusing to comply. And communities across the country are coming together to raise the alarm on ICE raids, inform neighbors of their civil rights, and protect each other in moving shows of solidarity.
It will be a long fight ahead. And as nonprofit movement media, Truthout plans to be there documenting and uplifting resistance.
As we undertake this life-sustaining work, we appeal for your support. We have 24 hours left in our fundraiser: Please, if you find value in what we do, join our community of sustainers by making a monthly or one-time gift.