Top Democrats are discouraging President Joe Biden from reauthorizing a cruel immigration policy that locks entire families away like common criminals.
In early March, sources in the Biden administration told The New York Times that the president’s immigration officials are considering reauthorizing migrant family detention, a policy that calls for jailing undocumented migrant families in the same facility. The policy was used in the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies, and it has been widely criticized for its inhumanity and its facilitation of human rights abuses.
The policy was used in the Bush, Obama and Trump presidencies, and it has been widely criticized for its inhumanity and its facilitation of human rights abuses.
As the Times noted, “The Biden administration has largely ended the practice of family detention, instead releasing families into the United States temporarily and using ankle bracelets, traceable cellphones or other methods to keep track of them.”
But as May approaches, so does the court-approved end of Title 42. That bigoted policy, devised during Donald Trump’s presidency, allows the U.S. to turn away asylum-seekers on purported public health grounds. Now it appears Biden and company want to use the threat of locking families away to stave off a potential influx of migrants once Title 42 is lifted.
For Biden, who publicly denounced Trump’s use of migrant family detention as a candidate in 2020 and vowed to adhere to more compassionate immigration policies as president, such a move is a betrayal of the liberal voters who trusted he would keep his word.
That’s why several Democratic caucus chairs issued a statement this month after it was reported that the Biden administration was planning to revive the family detention policy. And they used remarks from Biden’s own head of homeland security to make their point.
“We agree with Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas when he said, ‘A detention center is not where a family…
Read the full article here
