#Border Patrol Overwhelmed by Influx of Migrants -- Thousands Unaccompanied Minors Crossing into US

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Trump-era policy Biden administration uses to expel migrants faces uncertain future

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/trump-era-policy-biden-administration-uses-to-expel-migrants-faces-uncertain-future/

Trump-era policy Biden administration uses to expel migrants faces uncertain future

The public health order remains the subject of litigation. Since February, plaintiffs in a case concerning families being subject to the order have been in negotiations with the government.

While an increasing number of migrants have already arrived at the US southern border in recent months, the vast majority have been quickly expelled. Unaccompanied minors, though, were exempt and as a result, admitted to the US, quickly overwhelming government resources at a time when the federal government wasn’t prepared to take them on.

Republicans seized on Biden’s handling of the influx amid images of overcrowded border facilities, criticizing the administration’s actions and urging him to keep the Trump-era pandemic policy in place.

Administration officials, meanwhile, have not indicated when the policy will be reversed, but behind the scenes, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing for the possibility.

US Customs and Border Protection has been running scenarios of what happens if the public health order ends, according to two Homeland Security officials. The administration has also been engaging with immigrant advocacy groups, who have been critical of the pandemic-related rule and its use, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

Some exceptions to the policy

Some exceptions have been made to the policy, including exempting 35 families daily who are referred by the American Civil Liberties Union to be admitted to the United States.

“We are pleased that we have been able to get so many vulnerable families in through the exemption process, but ultimately that’s not sufficient and we remain troubled by the lack of a timeline to get rid of Title 42, which we have always believed — and even more so — to not just be justified on public health grounds,” said Lee Gelernt, lead attorney in the litigation over the public health order.

The administration’s ability to use the policy has been limited along part of the border, where Mexico was unable to accommodate returns, prompting an ad hoc system in which some families would be flown elsewhere on the border and others released into the US.

A Homeland Security spokesperson told Appradab that the administration is working to streamline a system of identifying and processing vulnerable individuals who warrant humanitarian exceptions under the order.

“This humanitarian exception process involves close coordination with international and nongovernmental organizations in Mexico and Covid-19 testing before those identified through this process are allowed to enter the country,” the spokesperson said.

The number of humanitarian exceptions, particularly for families, appears to have increased under the Biden administration, according to preliminary Customs and Border Protection data obtained by Appradab. Nearly 1,600 family members were processed for entry into the US at the ports along the southern border from April 1 to 28. That’s up from 620 people during the prior four weeks, the data shows.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said last week that the timeline to end the administration’s reliance on rapid border expulsions is “as quickly as possible,” though he did not provide a deadline. Mayorkas also acknowledged that some of the pressure to end the use of Title 42 comes from the ongoing lawsuit.

Officials conceded the policy has helped the administration manage the influx of migrants crossing the border amid the pandemic.

“Our plan at the border is tied to the pandemic, but also tied to our more comprehensive plan to manage migration, as I said, from the region all the way up to the Southwest border,” Andrea Flores, director for transborder security at the National Security Council, told reporters last month.

‘Quite necessary but also quite convenient’

The administration understands that given the policies it put in place, Title 42 is “not only quite necessary but also quite convenient right now,” a DHS official told Appradab.

The official argued the situation at the border would be worse without the policy, pointing to the migrant influx over the past several months, which left thousands of people languishing in border facilities, strained resources and hurt morale among Border Patrol agents.

“If we didn’t have it,” the official said, “it would be a very, very stark situation.” But the official noted that “the courts may be the ones who dictate” the policy’s fate, regardless of what the administration would prefer.

Some lawmakers are wary of undoing the policy too quickly.

“Title 42 is helping, but if this President takes that away, then it opens the floodgates even more so,” Republican Rep. Yvette Herrell of New Mexico said during a news conference earlier this year.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas said he supports the use of the health order for now. “Imagine if we would allow the single adults, which are the largest amount of people coming in, to come into the United States. Yes, I support Title 42. Yes, I understand there’s a lawsuit that is questioning whether this is the right thing to do,” he said.

“Sometime when things get better in the pandemic, then a decision will have to be made whether you keep Title 42 or when you get rid of it,” he added.

But experts, immigrant advocates and attorneys have questioned the effectiveness of the public health order.

“Title 42 is gradually becoming less effective as a deterrent and more problematic on questions of rights and procedures,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute.

“They view everything through the lens of border management,” said Jennifer Quigley, senior director for government affairs at Human Rights First. “They feel like we have the kids’ situation under control, so let’s not completely lift Title 42. Let’s tinker with it, so that we have small numbers come in.”

A recently released Human Rights First report found many of those expelled have been put in harm’s way and continue to face danger in Mexico or their home countries.

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More Migrant Children Than Ever Are Being Held In U.S. Custody, Reports Say

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that the border has seen an influx of people, overwhelming the facilities set up to house children and families.

The U.S. is holding thousands of migrant children at the border in detention-like facilities as the Biden administration has been under pressure to respond to a recent surge of unaccompanied minors crossing the border, according to a recent report. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki defended the Biden administration’s immigration policy Wednesday, saying, officials understand “ there will be more kids who are crossing the border.”

A New York Times report this week found that more than 3,250 children are currently in custody at the U.S.-Mexico border — marking the highest number ever detained by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. The amount of children detained has tripled within the last two weeks, and many of them have been held in cells for longer than the legally permitted three-day maximum, The Times reported. According to NBC News, more than 1,400 children have been held longer than three days in concrete rooms known as “hieleras,” or iceboxes. Nearly 170 of the detained  children are under the age of 13.

Psaki on Tuesday attributed the heightened number of detainees and length of stay to factors including the pandemic creating “undue hardships,” natural disasters, and flight from violence or persecution. 

Nearly two months into his presidency, Joe Biden’s administration has diverted from hardline the Trump-era immigration policy that expelled anyone, including migrant children, attempting to cross the border during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

During a press briefing on Tuesday, Psaki would not confirm to reporters the exact number of children detained as reported by the Times, but confirmed an increase.

On Wednesday, White House officials announced the reinstating of a policy from President Obama’s administration called The Central American Minors Program, which would allow children from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to be reunited with their parents who are lawfully in the U.S.

“This program provides a safe, legal, and orderly alternative to the risks incurred in the attempt to migrate to the United States irregularly,” the announcement read. “The U.S. southern border remains closed to irregular migration, and we reiterate our warning that people not attempt that dangerous journey.”

Psaki said on Tuesday children who are “apprehended at the border” are typically processed through Customs and Border Patrol Facilities and then sent to Health and Human Services (HHS) shelters, “where the children have access to education services, medical and mental health services.”

“One of the challenges we’ve had is that COVID-19, the pandemic, had initially severely limited the amount of children that could be taken into HHS facilities and the pace at which that could happen,” Psaki continued. “So one of our focuses is on working on seeing how we can address that.”

Psaki said the Biden administration is looking into using additional facilities and following safety guidelines set forth by the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention to allow HHS facilities to return “to pre-COVID numbers.” 

“We’re also looking for ways that we can expedite the way that we vet and process families and sponsor host families where these kids can go,” Psaki said. “We don’t want them to be in the [Customs and Border Patrol] facilities. We want them to be in shelters as quickly as possible.”

Psaki said that immigration policy pertaining to the U.S.-Mexico border remains a top priority for Biden, who during his campaign said one of his first orders of business as president would be to reunite the more than 500 children separated from their families at the border. Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorka said his department is working to reunite those children with their families, either in the U.S. or in their country of origin. 

Psaki said the influx of migrant children being held at the border is due to the administration not turning people away. 

“This administration did not feel that it was humane or moral to send kids back on this treacherous journey… back to countries where they were fleeing persecution or fleeing really difficult circumstances,” Psaki told MSNBC's “Morning Joe” on Tuesday.

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‘The American Dream has turned into hell’: In test of a deterrent, Juarez scrambles before U.S. dumps thousands of migrants

https://wapo.st/2MS4Cdj

Trump vows mass immigration arrests, removals of ‘millions of illegal aliens’ starting next week

‘The American Dream has turned into hell’: In test of a deterrent, Juarez scrambles before U.S. dumps thousands of migrants

By Maria SACCHETTI | Published June 17 at 6:53 PM ET | Washington Post |

Posted June 18, 2019 |

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — This gritty, industrial city on the banks of the murky Rio Grande is bracing for the Trump administration to dump thousands of migrants from Central America and other lands here under a new agreement to curb mass migration to the United States. But frantic Mexican officials say they likely cannot handle the rapid influx, as they are desperate for more shelter space, food and supplies.

With days to prepare, a top state official said he expects a fivefold increase in the number of migrants who will be sent to Juarez as a result of the expansion of the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. The program, which is under court challenge, sends migrants who are seeking refuge in the United States back across the border into Mexico to await their asylum hearings.

More than 200 migrants were sent back to Juarez on Thursday, double the previous day, and officials expect as many as 500 migrants each day will be returned from El Paso to Juarez in coming weeks.

“We didn’t expect this many, but it’s our job and we’re trying to handle the situation,” said Enrique Valenzuela, head of the Chihuahua State Population Council, which registers migrants in Juarez. Valenzuela said Mexico’s federal government brokered the deal to accept the migrants with the White House, part of a diplomatic effort to avoid President Trump’s threatened tariffs on Mexican goods. “We had no say. We had no choice.”

Returning migrants from the United States into Mexico is the cornerstone of an agreement between the two countries to stanch historic flows of migrant families and unaccompanied minors into the United States. Migrant families with young children are overwhelming almost all aspects of the U.S. immigration system and are frustrating Trump’s campaign promises to block illegal immigration.

The agreement already is testing the infrastructure in Juarez, a city that is crowded and lacking in shelter space. Juarez has about a dozen migrant shelters — most run by churches — with room for 1,500 people.

That many people could be turned away from the U.S. border every few days, and Valenzuela said the city could use 20 to 30 more shelters to house potentially thousands more migrants.

Valenzuela estimated that as many as 70,000 migrants could be returned from the United States to Juarez this calendar year, a number that would equate to about 5 percent of the city’s population. Borderwide, Mexico has accepted about 10,000 migrants this year.

Trump threatened to slap increasing tariffs on Mexico unless the country stepped up immigration enforcement with the goal of preventing northward movement from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and several other countries with populations that are attempting to flee violence and extreme poverty. Since the June 7 agreement, Mexico has deployed police and newly created national guard units to the southern border with Guatemala, intensified highway checkpoints, and directed border cities to host asylum seekers who make it to the United States and are turned away.

Mexico’s crackdown aims to deter migrants from attempting to enter the United States, though officials say it is too soon to tell whether it has had any effect on the number of people crossing from Juarez into the southwest Texas city of El Paso. U.S. Border Patrol agents here in the El Paso region have not seen a significant dip in apprehensions since the agreement was signed, said Border Patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero. Agents arrested between 600 and 800 migrants each day in the past week, and migrants still cross the border so often that the sand is dotted with their footprints.

Some migrants said in recent days that the early stages of Mexico’s increased enforcement already has exposed vulnerabilities. Several migrants said in separate interviews that Mexican federal police and other public security forces had demanded bribes of $15 to $20 per person to pass through checkpoints and reach the U.S. border. As buses passed through in recent days, the bribes of hundreds of dollars meant their travel north was essentially unimpeded if Mexican authorities were paid off.

“They said if you want to enter you have to pay,” said Martha Velasquez, 54, of Honduras, who was planning to join her sister, a U.S. citizen, and their mother, a green card holder, in Atlanta. She was returned to Juarez after crossing the U.S. border. “This is extortion.”

Migrants in Juarez said returning asylum seekers to Mexico — if it becomes the inevitable result of trying to cross into the United States — could deter future migrants because conditions there are dangerous and inhospitable. Juarez, once the world’s murder capital, can be a frightening alternative for migrants who had dreamed of reuniting with friends and family in the relative safety of cities across the United States.

When the ramp-up began Thursday, stunned migrants, some of whom had spent days in border jails, trudged out of Mexico’s immigration office into the sweltering sun. Many had not showered in a week. They had no water, no cellphones, no money and no place to live.

“The American Dream has turned into hell,” said Damarys Perez Carrillo, 38, who said she fled Guatemala after her brother-in-law was murdered. She could not find her 22-year-old nephew Eddy, who was separated from her after they surrendered to Border Patrol in Texas.

“They’re sending us all back,” said Julio Alberto Lopez, a 45-year-old bricklayer from Guatemala who had paid $6,500 to a smuggler for safe passage through Mexico. With his son Abner, 14, he thought he would gain easy entry into the United States, because officials rarely deport families. But within hours, he was returned to Juarez.

“I thought they would give me a chance, with my son,” Lopez said.

‘WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ?

Many issues surrounding the anticipated influx remain unresolved: Migrants returned to Mexico are allowed to wait there for their hearings in U.S. courts — a period that sometimes spans months — but they do not have permission to work to support themselves. Many do not have relatives there who can take them in, as they do in the United States. Some are sick and in need of doctors or hospitalization.

“What worries me is that the city and the state, we’re not that prepared,” said the Rev. Javier Calvillo Salazar, who runs the city’s largest migrant shelter, Casa del Migrante. “That could plunge us into a crisis.”

Mexico is under intense pressure to help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security expand MPP, which is also known informally as “Remain in Mexico.” Returns could soar from 250 a day to 1,000 a day along the entire border from California to Texas.

One city that could see more returns is Piedras Negras, a city of 150,000 that sits across the border from Eagle Pass, Tex. The Mexican city has prospered via trade with the United States and has sought to mitigate the migration crush at the border in an effort to appease the U.S. government.

City officials helped block a caravan headed toward the U.S. border and has appointed a steakhouse owner, Hector Menchaca, to run a waitlist that requires migrants to take a number and get in line until the United States invites them in to apply for asylum.

But Menchaca said it would be “catastrophic” for the United States to force those migrants to return to Piedras Negras while they await a decision in the clogged immigration courts.

“What are we going to do on the border with all the migrants, waiting a year for their court date?” Menchaca said. “If they’re illegal, how are they going to work in Piedras Negras? Who’s going to feed them? Where are they going to go?

‘THE DREAM IS OVER ’

The U.S. Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which runs from west Texas into desolate stretches of New Mexico desert, has seen some of the sharpest increases in apprehensions during the migration surge and is likely to see some of the largest increases in returns to Mexico, U.S. officials said.

In Juarez, where violent crime is widespread, migrants must decide whether to return home to their families or test their luck in a nation where they have no connections or support.

Of the 4,500 migrants returned to this city from March to June, municipal officials estimate about 40 percent return to their homelands at their own expense. Sixty percent remain in shelters, rented apartments or with friends.

“That’s where you really see it, the need,” said Rogelio Pinal Castellanos, the human rights director for Juarez’s municipal government. “There are people who say, ‘I’ll die of hunger in Juarez before I’d return to my country,’ because these are people who are really fleeing a critically violent situation. They fear for their lives. And there are those who tell us they’re going home to their country. Or their asylum petition is false.”

Advocates for immigrants caution that migrants with valid cases might flee Juarez because it is dangerous, and they do not have regular access to U.S. lawyers to build their asylum cases.

Ruben Garcia, executive director of Annunciation House, a migrant shelter in El Paso, said expelling asylum seekers is a “wholesale abdication�� of the United States’ commitment to refugee protocols.

“This is about ‘keep them out,’ ” he said.

At Valenzuela’s state office this week, some dejected migrants were ready to give up.

“The dream is over,” said Ana Julia Rojas, 46, who officials returned to Juarez with her son Ricardo, 10, dressed in a Captain America T-shirt. She had her brother’s phone number in New York written in ink on her left hand.

Her time in immigration jail soured her on the United States: “I’m going back to Honduras. It’s a poor country, but we’re fighters.”

In a new shelter that opened Friday in a modern white house in Juarez, women shook their heads when Valenzuela asked if they wanted to go home.

One woman’s husband had been shot. Another woman fled an abusive relationship.

But they also did not want to stay in Mexico.

ALWAYS ANOTHER WAY

Hundreds of miles away along Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, migrants were continuing to take risks to head north.

In Huixtla, 50 miles north of the Guatemala border, migrants waited to jump atop a northbound cargo train, just west of the nearest checkpoint.

“We were taking buses, but when we saw the checkpoints, we got off and left the highway,” said Kilber Saul, 17, from San Pedro Sula, Honduras.

Saul and his friend Jose Hernández, 21, had crossed the Suchiate river, between Mexico and Guatemala, a few days earlier. They said they were fleeing violence in their hometown, and the lack of opportunity for young people outside of organized crime.

On Friday morning, they were walking on the train tracks in Huixtla, their only plan to avoid being detained. Mexico’s surge in enforcement has focused on highways, leaving vast stretches of land — and railway — unpatrolled.

“Either we’ll keep walking, or, if the train comes, we’ll ride it,” Saul said.

Advocates said migrants will continue to find their way north until the United States and other nations address the reasons migrants flee their home countries: poverty, hunger, and a lack of security and opportunity.

“Here they put up a wall,” said Pinal Castellanos, Juarez’s human rights director, gesturing to the 18-foot fence that divides Juarez from the United States. “Has this stopped anything? No. People will always find another way, even if it’s risky.”

Kevin Sieff in Huixtla, Mexico, and Nick Miroff in Washington contributed to this report.

Maria Sacchetti covers immigration for the Washington Post, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the court system. She previously reported for the Boston Globe, where her work led to the release of several immigrants from jail. She lived for several years in Latin America and is fluent in Spanish.

#donald trump #u.s. news #politics #trump administration #president donald trump #trump #republican politics #white house #politics and government #international news #trump scandals #republican party #immigration #borderwall #racism #national security #must reads #elections #maga #civil-rights #democracy #immigration reform #mexico #humanitarian crisis

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A Trump administration strategy led to the child migrant backup crisis at the border

When thousands of migrant children ended up stranded in U.S. Border Patrol stations last spring, President Trump’s administration characterized the crisis as a spontaneous result of the record crush of migrants overwhelming the U.S. immigration system. But the backup also was a result of policy decisions that officials knew would ensnare unaccompanied minors in bureaucratic tangles and leave them in squalid conditions, according to dozens of interviews and internal documents viewed by The Washington Post.

By Neena Satija, Karoun Demirjian, Abigail Hauslohner and Josh Dawsey

November 12, 2019 at 11:13 a.m. CST

The policies, which administration officials began pursuing soon after Trump took office in January 2017, made it harder for adult relatives of unaccompanied minors to secure the children’s release from U.S. custody. Enhanced vetting of sponsors — including fingerprints and other paperwork — and the sharing of that information between child welfare and immigration authorities slowed down the release of children and exposed the sponsors to deportation.

The government knew the moves would strain child shelters, according to documents and current and former officials, but it was aimed at sending a message to Central American migrants: Coming to the United States illegally has consequences.

Administration officials said the policy was designed to protect children from potential abusers or criminals, but they also wanted to create a broad deterrent effect; they reasoned that undocumented migrants might hesitate to claim their children for fear of being deported. Authorities weighed deterrence — a central aspect of U.S. immigration policy under both President Barack Obama and Trump — against the possibility of children crowding into border stations. And they chose to push forward, knowing what would result.

“This will strain bed capacity,” authorities wrote in a discussion paper in February 2018.

The approach caused thousands of unaccompanied minors to be stranded in U.S. custody and exacerbated the appearance of a crisis on the southern border — a major element underlying the administration’s public request for billions of dollars in additional funding from Congress.

Lawyers were allowed to visit children in the border stations, and Democratic lawmakers were invited to tour the facilities when they were at their worst. They witnessed — and shared with the public — scenes of desperate children held in crowded cells without basic necessities.

According to current and former government officials, and emails and memos detailing the Trump administration’s strategy, it is clear they knew that without enough beds in government shelters, children would languish in Border Patrol stations not equipped to care for them, making the government a target of lawsuits and public criticism — both of which occurred.

One of the key figures in that strategizing, Chad Wolf, is set to take the helm at the Department of Homeland Security. Senators on Tuesday are expected to first vote on Wolf’s confirmation to his current job as undersecretary for strategy, policy and plans. Wolf is Trump’s favored pick to then take over as acting head of the agency, just as officials brace for what could be another increase in migrant crossings.

Top DHS officials have warned that the reprieve from the record influx of migrants in recent months is probably temporary. Acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner Mark Morgan said last month that the number of people crossing the border is still higher than at the same time last year and remains a “crisis.” Migration also typically increases in the spring, and the U.S. government is preparing for another surge of families and unaccompanied minors.

Such a potential wave of children is what inspired the early discussions about policy changes within the Trump administration in 2017 — along with debate about the policy’s effects.

The Trump administration’s wildly contradictory statements on family separation

'Safety' vs. 'anguish'

Staff at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is in charge of caring for unaccompanied migrant children, argued against the policy in weekly memos during the summer of 2017. Jonathan White, then deputy director of the ORR’s children’s program, warned in a July 2017 memo that the administration’s plan to separate children from their families and to alter the process of handing children over to sponsors would “result in significant increases” in how long children would be held.

White wrote that children would spend an average of 95 days in federal custody and that the department would need at least 6,500 additional beds in just three months. White declined to comment for this story.

Documents reviewed by The Post show that officials also estimated that HHS would need an additional $686 million in funding — more than 50 percent above its planned budget — to accommodate the policy and create additional bed space.

But the administration did not formally request extra money for that purpose at the time, according to senior Democratic and Republican congressional aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private negotiations.

Mark Weber, an HHS spokesman, did not dispute those details but maintained that the border backups resulted from a historic influx of unaccompanied children. In May alone, 9,000 children were referred to the government’s care, he said.

Administration officials also thought the backlog would be short-lived.

“At some point in FY19, the deterrent effect of the new policy should stop families and unscrupulous adult aliens from using the reunification process, normalizing and reversing the volume trend” of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border, authorities wrote in a discussion paper that the National Security Council shared with senior administration officials. The paper was shared with an interagency group that met regularly in the White House Situation Room to discuss immigration and border security.

Some senior officials acknowledged in interviews that they expected some children to remain in custody for longer periods of time, but they said the policy was developed with child safety in mind; they did not want children to be released to smugglers or criminals.

“My number one concern on this was making sure that kids were safe,” Tom Homan, former acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an interview. “I know it’s a tough decision. It was never easy. You have to weigh the operational concerns, and the humanitarian concerns, and how long they’re going to stay in detention. . . . Yeah, it was going to increase the bed stay, but it wouldn’t be like twofold, threefold, fourfold. We thought it was worth a try, and it if doesn’t work, we can always pedal back and change gears.”

Acting ICE director Matthew Albence said the policy was part of the “deterrent effect” the government was seeking: “The goal was to prevent these children from coming on this dangerous journey.”

Albence, Homan and other Trump administration officials say the backlog arose because of Washington politics, blaming Democrats in Congress for being too slow to authorize funding for more shelter beds at facilities designed to care for children.

“No one who values child welfare and safety would argue smuggled, exploited and unaccompanied children at the southern border should be handed over to illegal alien ‘sponsors’ without reliable identity confirmation and background checks,” said deputy White House press secretary Hogan Gidley. “The only ones responsible for crowded shelters are Democrats who want to preserve and expand loopholes used by child smugglers for purely political purposes.”

A few months after the policy was implemented, HHS officials determined that it was not improving child safety. They concluded that the added vetting was redundant and needlessly extended the time children remained in custody, according to internal documents that ORR Deputy Director Jallyn Sualog presented to Congress, and to testimony on Capitol Hill.

Advocates saw a darker motive in policies that they say were “intentionally developed to inflict maximum anguish on children,” said Heidi Altman, of the National Immigrant Justice Center. She said officials knew that their plans “would trigger a chain of events that left children hungry, abused and sick in overcrowded CBP facilities.”

Democrats likewise have argued that the White House set up the crisis. Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), presiding over a House Oversight subcommittee hearing last month, noted that it had always been possible for the government to ease conditions but that officials chose not to.

“We did not have to have a backlog. We did not,” DeLauro said. “That was created.”

Tightening the rules

The Department of Homeland Security did a test run of the policy in the summer of 2017, instructing border agents to interview young migrants about the relatives they wanted to live with in the United States. They then created “target folders” for those adults that could be used to take action against them, according to internal emails that the American Immigration Council obtained via the Freedom of Information Act and made available online.

At the ORR, then-director Scott Lloyd was thinking about the administration’s “moral imperative” to protect children from smugglers and to ensure that gangs were not exploiting the child shelter system to enter the country.

“Our legal responsibilities are child welfare,” Lloyd said in an interview. “But even from a child welfare perspective, it’s desirable to deter people from taking that risk, putting their kids in that type of harm.”

Lloyd said he and his staff agreed that better communication between his agency and DHS was the best way to address those concerns.

“We needed to know if a kid had any gang ties or gang ties in their family — we needed to make sure that DHS had that information and that we had that information,” Lloyd said.

The partnership was formalized in an agreement that mandated significantly stricter fingerprinting and screening requirements for all adults who hoped to sponsor a migrant child or who lived in a house where a migrant child might stay.

“If this could get finalized and implemented soon, it would have a tremendous deterrent effect,” Gene Hamilton, counsel to then-attorney general Jeff Sessions, wrote in notes he sent by email in December 2017 to Wolf, the senior DHS official who is now in line to take over as acting secretary. The existence of the notes — but not the identity of the authors or the recipients — was first reported by NBC News.

Wolf declined to comment.

Alexei Woltornist, a Justice Department spokesman, said the agreement was just one of “numerous steps” to prevent the victimization of children: “Ending the trauma these children can face requires taking action against all parties who entrust criminals and cartels to transport their children across the border.”

HHS Secretary Alex Azar and then-DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — the two department heads tasked with carrying out the policy — voiced serious concerns, according to two officials familiar with the discussions. They worried that the agreement would be impossible to implement, could lead to longer detention times for children and would be viewed publicly as unnecessarily harsh, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal policy deliberations.

Caitlin Oakley, an HHS spokeswoman, did not dispute that account, but she said in a statement that Azar “supports the Trump administration’s goal of enforcing immigration laws and securing the border.”

“The backup at the border of minors witnessed this summer was the consequence of a broken immigration system,” Oakley added.

Nielsen declined to comment.

One HHS employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal matters recalled Lloyd telling staffers that the White House wanted them “to do everything you can to prevent backups into border stations. But it is better that there be a backup in a border station than that we not enforce immigration laws and that we not deter migration.”

Lloyd denied that account.

“I don’t ever recall holding, even temporarily, the idea that backups at border stations was a remotely acceptable scenario,” Lloyd said.

Internal memos show that for months before implementing the policy, government lawyers worried about lawsuits and discussed ways to claim that the policy would make children safer. In a January 2018 draft memo, viewed by The Post, Justice Department lawyers proposed defending the plan to conduct enhanced background checks and share them with enforcement agents as a means of protecting migrant children from witnessing the eventual deportation of their parents or relatives.

“We can argue that whether a proposed sponsor is subject to removal is a key factor in determining suitability, given the impact that immigration enforcement against, or detention of, a sponsor would have on the circumstances faced by” unaccompanied minors living with the sponsor, Justice Department lawyers wrote in January 2018 correspondence with DHS and HHS officials as part of an “analysis of litigation risk” associated with the agreement.

Federal judge blocks Trump administration from detaining migrant children for indefinite periods

The administration also developed and rolled out its family separation policy in the spring of 2018, part of its “zero tolerance” approach at the border. The months-long initiative, which separated thousands of children from their parents, compounded the need for shelter space. After a public outcry, the administration ended the policy.

By the fall of 2018, most of the families had been reunited, and the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border had fallen, but the population of children in the shelters continued to grow, according to HHS data. By October 2018, migrant children were spending an average of more than 90 days in federal custody — exactly as White had predicted — more than twice the length of stays two years earlier.

While some adult migrants were afraid to come forward to claim their children, the contractors tasked with carrying out the background checks and fingerprinting were overwhelmed, according to current and former HHS officials. The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocates filed lawsuits challenging the policy, arguing that parents waited months for fingerprinting results.

Time in custody grows

Kevin Dinnin, the head of the nonprofit that operated a shelter for migrant children in Tornillo, Tex., said the crush of minors became increasingly severe through late 2018, and he told the agency he could not continue. Images of teenagers behind chain-link fences shuffling single-file from tent to tent had drawn public outrage, and Dinnin could not understand why children continued arriving at the shelter even though migrant crossings had slowed and family separations had ended.

“The problem was, kids were coming and not being discharged,” Dinnin said. “The average length of stay just kept increasing.”

An HHS official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy decisions said the agency would never have opened the Tornillo shelter had it not been for the agreement with DHS.

“It was the increase in average length of care that created a need for thousands of beds,” the official said.

U.S. returns 100 migrant children to overcrowded border facility as HHS says it is out of space

HHS career staff members decided that the agency had no choice but to eliminate some aspects of the background checks to relieve the pressure on the system. To avoid roiling the White House, they slowly rolled back the policy through several “operational directives” over a period of months, according to current and former HHS officials.

The agency announced that it would stop fingerprinting all adult members of a sponsor’s household in December 2018, and the government then quickly released thousands of children from custody. The Tornillo shelter closed a few weeks later.

But with the agency still fingerprinting sponsors, some children continued to languish in custody for months, especially when migrant crossings surged again in the spring. Children apprehended at the border were left in Border Patrol stations as a result.

Democratic lawmakers, lawyers and advocates toured Border Patrol stations in late spring and early summer and delivered scathing descriptions of the suffering they witnessed. DHS and HHS officials pleaded with Congress for more money, saying they had been blindsided by the numbers. HHS canceled English classes, soccer and legal aid for migrant children, citing inadequate funds.

In June, Congress approved a $4.6 billion emergency border spending package, shortly after hearing the government’s pleas about what they described as a humanitarian crisis at the border.

Officials credited the subsequent release of hundreds more children to the aid package. But in court documents and congressional testimony, they acknowledged that moves to scale back the enhanced background checks had made the difference. Those included a final directive in June to stop fingerprinting aunts, uncles and grandparents seeking custody of migrant children, speeding up the release of more than 1,000 children in a matter of weeks and allowing the emergency shelter in Homestead, Fla., to close.

“I do support the four operational directives in order to expedite the release of children to properly vetted sponsors,” ORR Director Jonathan Hayes said at a congressional hearing in July. “I want to see the children back with their families.”

Officials have argued that shortening the time that children are held in federal custody will boost the incentive for migrant families to seek entry into the United States.

“The shorter the stay, the more likely they’re willing to take it on,” Homan said. “If I think I’ll be detained for a year, I might not come. But if I’ll be detained for a week and be released, that may convince me to make that trip.”

Nick Miroff, Maria Sacchetti, Paul Kane and Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.

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