Judge Says Coronavirus Can’t Be Used As Reason To Quickly Deport Unaccompanied Minors

Speaker 1: 00:00 A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to stop expelling minors, seeking asylum in the U S since March, the administration is sent back to Mexico or other countries and estimated 200,000 border crossers, including thousands of youngsters under age 16, traveling alone, joining me to discuss the broad implications of this ruling is KPBS reporter max Rivlin Nadler, max, welcome back to the program. Thanks for having me. So this ruling by federal judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, DC, it requires the government to once again, processed the humanitarian claims of minors crossing the border alone. What does that mean? Speaker 2: 00:37 So under this program that was started shortly after the beginning of the pandemic in, in March, as it spread across the country. Uh, everyone even on an accompanied minors for the most part were sent back to Mexico within a few minutes, uh, you know, as short as, as an hour and a half even, um, or if not a few hours, uh, but it was a very quick process. People were fingerprinted, they were Aidid and they were sent back. Um, and this led to situations where young people, as young as three, four, five were sent back into Mexico, um, sometimes when they're not even Mexican, if they're from a central American country as well. So what this ruling now says is that they actually will get a hearing on the credible fear of where they're leaving from. And they'll be placed in a holding facility before they're immediately deported. So we have across this country, as we know, from previous humanitarian crises, along the Southern border, uh, several places where we can hold young people. Uh, these are quasi detention facilities for the most part. Uh, some are hotels, but young people can stay there, uh, for months or for weeks or months as their asylum case gets sorted out. Speaker 1: 01:48 The Trump administration used a public health provision to initiate this policy when the pandemic started explain that. Speaker 2: 01:54 So right at the beginning of the pandemic in March, the Trump administration used a CDC order, basically this old law that had been on the books for some time to say that the government has the right to expel people who might have contagious diseases. They then basically applied that to the entire Southern border and said that anybody who is coming, who does not have authorization to enter the United States who doesn't have a green card or a visa cannot enter the United States, including those seeking asylum. Speaker 1: 02:24 And this was a 19th century law under which the Trump administration initiated the policy of not allowing due process of minors, asylum claims explain the judge's decision regarding that law. Speaker 2: 02:35 Right? So the judge was basically saying that they had taken this title 42, which is in a larger CDC code and really expanded it into something that it wasn't, especially when it comes to minors, which is not allowing them to have their due process rights when it comes to asylum claims. So he says, you know, this is just making it a much larger rule than it is because they're taking away large precedents of, um, asylum law and, and basically other rulings about how we treat young people, uh, who will show up at the border. And this has been a point of contention, like I said, for more than a decade now, ever since young people started showing up in really high numbers in the early Obama administration. Speaker 1: 03:17 Now this action was brought by the American civil liberties union. It was on behalf of a Guatemalan teenager. What argument do the ACLU make? Speaker 2: 03:25 This Guatemalan teenager was set to be removed shortly after they entered the United States and the ACLU, uh, which had been looking for a plaintiff for some time to challenge this, uh, found him, went to a magistrate judge in Texas and basically got a stay on that removal by saying that it would circumvent his right to have a credible fear interview, as well as his rights as a young person, um, who is under 18 as a minor. So it went to a magistrate judge in Texas. The Texas judge agreed it stopped his removal and this larger ruling, which takes effect nationwide. It comes from this judge in DC who was acting off of the case of this Guatemalan teenager. And the ACLU's argument was you can't ignore this years and years of litigation just because you have this very expansive interpretation of a CDC subsection code, Speaker 1: 04:14 The ruling, as it stands now does not apply to adults crossing the border seeking asylum here, right? No hearings for them, Speaker 2: 04:21 Adults. There are other current policies in place which would allow very quick removal even without this title 42 code that they're citing. So, um, basically I think the priority was placed on the young people who we don't know exactly how many have been sent back. We have an idea that basically over 8,000 kids have been sent expelled across the entire border. That was as of September and around in San Diego, there's been around 50 unaccompanied children per month sent back to Mexico or their country of origin, uh, since March. But this is incomplete data because we're relying almost solely on the government. And we're hearing from the other side of the border, that there's a lot more people just being sent back or push back to the other side without any documentation. Speaker 1: 05:06 Now, what impact might this really have on the number of people showing up at border crossing, seeking asylum, and after all Mexico central America are wracked by COVID-19. Their economies are really struggling and places like Nicaragua have been belted by multiple hurricanes, Speaker 2: 05:21 Right? This current administration has done nothing to alleviate the circumstances that people are trying to leave from in central America. It's been just basically a suppression tactic trying to work with Mexico to make sure that, uh, it's militarized at Southern border to make sure that people can't make it to the United States. That's made great business for traffickers human traffickers to come and take people across the, the Southern border. So the basic idea here is that for the next couple of months, especially because of these natural disasters, the footage coming out of Nicaragua is horrifying. Um, people are still going to be leaving these countries and coming to the Southern border and just basically pushing them back into Mexico is not going to solve anything. Speaker 1: 06:01 And finally, some observers say this presents a challenge for the incoming Biden administration regarding the rise of migrants at the border seeking asylum. Uh, what do they mean by that? Right. Speaker 2: 06:10 So the Biden administration is going to have to ultimately decide whether they're going to lift title 42. Um, that's not going to be easy, right? Because you go on and do it in a way that doesn't lead to a rush on the border. Even if you planning on allowing as many people to come in as possible to get credible fear interviews, that takes a lot of manpower. And a lot of these institutions have been kind of stripped to the bone under the Trump administration, especially the asylum system has been taken apart. You'd have to rebuild it almost from scratch. Uh, so that's going to take a while. So a lot of people don't see this as a flip of the switch. They're seeing this as a multi-year effort by the Biden administration. And there are some things that they might actually keep from the Trump administration that had even been formulated during the Obama administration that they'd want to say, see, stick around, especially when it comes to central Americans. Speaker 1: 06:58 Well, lots to see how this is going to play out. I've been speaking with KPBS reporter max dribbling, Nadler. Thanks, max. Thank you.