EL PASO, Texas (AP) – The Latest on the separation of immigrant children from their parents (all times local): 2:30 p.m. White House Press…
EL PASO, Texas (AP) – The Latest on the separation of immigrant children from their parents (all times local):
2:30 p.m.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists the administration’s reversal in referring parents crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution is only temporary because the government is running out of resources.
Sanders spoke to reporters at the White House after the head of U. S. Customs and Border Protection said he has stopped referring cases involving children for prosecution.
That’s after President Trump’s order that stopped the separation of children and their parents who cross the border illegally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the „no tolerance“ policy is still in place, but there will be no one to prosecute without referrals.
Sanders says stopping the referrals is a temporary solution. She says it will only last a short amount of time because: „we’re going to run out of space, we’re going to run out of resources to keep people together.“
She called on Congress to change immigration laws.
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1:50 p.m.
No arrests were made among protesters blocking a street outside a speech where U. S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cast children at the nation’s southern border as victims of a broken immigration system.
Demonstrations outside the Peppermill hotel-casino were colorful, loud and peaceful.
An act of civil disobedience by more than 20 people who sat down in a crosswalk didn’t draw a police response.
Reno police Officer Travis Warren, a department spokesman, says officers only wanted to maintain safety, not arrest people.
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada leader Bob Fulkerson says protesters got their point across.
Fulkerson calls separating children from families at the nation’s southern border an act of state-sponsored terror.
Sessions told a school safety conference it’s a difficult and frustrating situation.
The attorney general declared that more than 80 percent of the children crossing U. S. borders are „by themselves, without parents or guardians -often sent with a paid smuggler.“
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1:40 p.m.
The head of U. S. Customs and Border Protection says an inability to process all asylum seekers at border crossings is temporary.
Commissioner Kevin McAleenan says the facilities were not built for such large numbers.
He says that some asylum seekers had to wait a day at four crossings, were turned away and told to return.
There are longer waits at San Diego’s San Ysidro crossing. He described it is an „outlier“ with longer waits.
Asylum seekers who go to a specific border crossing are a different from the thousands of parents who were arrested crossing illegally with their children under a zero tolerance policy.
McAleenan says agents have temporarily stopped referring cases for criminal prosecution involving parents and children.
He says it’s because of President Trump’s order that called for children to stop being separated from their families.
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1:35 p.m. Immigrant rights activists in Seattle are suing the Trump administration, saying it is unnecessarily prolonging the separation of asylum-seeking immigrants from their children.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed the lawsuit Monday in U. S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of three Central American migrants held in federal custody in Washington state, thousands of miles from where immigration officials have transferred their children. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other immigrants separated from their children and detained in Washington state.
The organization says U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has provided no information about whether or when the detainees‘ asylum cases will move forward or when they’ll be reunited with their children.
Washington, California, New Jersey and at least eight other states have also announced plans to sue the administration over the separations this week.
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1:25 p.m.
A federal judge in Portland ordered that immigration attorneys be given access to more than 120 asylum seekers being held at the federal prison in Oregon.
U. S. District Judge Michael Simon on Monday granted an emergency order sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Innovation Law Lab, a nonprofit whose attorneys have been denied access to immigrants being held at the prison in Sheridan.
U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred the immigrants to Oregon because other holding facilities have been overloaded since the Trump administration enacted a „zero tolerance“ policy involving people entering the U. S. illegally.
The detainees are from 16 countries, but more than half are from India and Nepal.
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1:15 p.m.
Federal officials Monday ordered protesters to end their round-the-clock occupation of property outside the U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Oregon.
Law enforcement officers began distributing notices to vacate late Monday morning. The several hundred protesters have so far ignored the demand.
The group rallying under the moniker Occupy ICE PDX wants to abolish ICE and end the Trump administration’s „zero tolerance“ policy in which all unlawful border crossings are referred for prosecution.
Occupy ICE PDX last week called for similar occupations throughout the country, and demonstrators have responded in places such as New York, Los Angeles and Detroit.
Earlier Monday, federal law enforcement officers entered the Portland’s ICE headquarters to secure government property ahead of the vacate notice.
he protesters did not try to thwart officers.
Portland’s ICE headquarters has been the site of an occupation since June 17.
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12:55 p.m.
The head of U. S. Customs and Border Protection says he has temporarily stopped referring for criminal prosecution adults who cross the border illegally with children.
Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters in Texas Monday he ordered referrals suspended within hours of President Trump’s executive order last week that stopped the practice of separating families.
He says that the zero tolerance policy remains in effect, but cases cannot be prosecuted because parents cannot be separated from their children.
He says he is working to develop plan to resume illegally entry prosecutions of adults with children.
Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in Reno, Nevada that federal prosecutors would continue to criminally prosecute adults caught crossing the border.
But Border Patrol agents must refer cases for prosecution.
More than 2,300 children were separated from their families before the order last week that is causing chaos at the border on how to implement it.
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12:05 p.m.
A temporary tent shelter set up in far west Texas for immigrant children is close to its 360-person capacity.
Reporters were allowed Monday to briefly visit the shelter at the Tornillo border crossing, where more than 320 children ages 13 to 17 are being held.
About half are from Guatemala, and 23 of the children had been separated from adults who accompanied them across the U. S.-Mexico border.
The facility has a current capacity of 360. The tents are air conditioned, and a facility administrator told reporters that the main complaint he hears from children on site is that the tents get too cold sometimes.
According to the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, boys and girls are kept in separate tents and use separate bathrooms and showers.
Reporters weren’t allowed to enter any tents holding children. Two girls who stopped briefly in front of reporters said that they were doing well.
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12 p.m.
A Democratic lawmaker says an eastern Kansas nonprofit that has a contract with the federal government to care for unaccompanied minors is caring for 44 immigrant youth, nine of them under the age of 12.
House Minority Leader Jim Ward and former U. S. Attorney Barry Grissom are working to reunite the children with their parents.
Grissom has assembled a team of 10 lawyers to provide legal services to the children.
Grissom says they have been led to believe some of the children were separated from parents in a crackdown on illegal crossings of the U. S-Mexico border, but that is not confirmed.
Grissom, Ward, state officials and officials from The Villages, which operates five group homes home on a 400-acre (162-hectare) site outside Topeka, are set to meet on the issue Wednesday.
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11:55 a.m.
A Democratic congresswoman says children as young as 4 and 5 are among a group of 22 unaccompanied migrant children being held in a Catholic Charities facility south of Miami.
U. S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz says conditions at the Monsignor Bryan Walsh Children’s Village she visited on Monday are much better than at the Homestead Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, which she toured Saturday.
That center is holding about 1,000 migrants, including 70 who’ve been separated from their parents.
President Donald Trump signed an order last week ending the policy, but many children remain separated.
Wasserman Shultz told reporters on Monday that she considers the practice of separating children from their parents „sadistic,“ “demonic,“ and „outrageous.“
She noted that she saw two minor children who have newborns at the Children’s Village.
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11:50 a.
