Virus cited in expulsions of young migrants

Trump administration sends 600 children away in April under emergency edict

FILE - This April 22, 2020, file photo, shows Juarez, Mexico, and the Rio Grande from El Paso Texas. U.S. border agencies quickly expelled about 600 child migrants in April after federal agencies began prohibiting asylum claims at the southern border, citing the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio, File)
FILE - This April 22, 2020, file photo, shows Juarez, Mexico, and the Rio Grande from El Paso Texas. U.S. border agencies quickly expelled about 600 child migrants in April after federal agencies began prohibiting asylum claims at the southern border, citing the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Cedar Attanasio, File)

HOUSTON -- Under U.S. law, young migrants and asylum-seekers would normally be allowed to live with relatives while their cases wind through immigration courts. Instead the Trump administration is expelling them under an emergency declaration citing the coronavirus pandemic, with 600 minors expelled in April alone.

Border agencies say they have to restrict asylum claims and border crossings during the pandemic to prevent spread of the virus. Migrants' advocates call that a pretext to dispense with federal protections for children.

Brenda, 16, left Guatemala in hopes of reaching the U.S. to eventually work and help her family.

Her family borrowed $13,000 to pay a smuggler and months later she crossed illegally. Authorities took her into custody in April at a Texas stash house, she said.

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"I did ask to talk to my brother because he wanted to get a lawyer, because he wanted to fight for my case," she said. "But they told me they were not letting people talk to anyone. No matter how much I fought, they were not letting anyone stay."

She is now under quarantine at her family's home.

A 10-year-old boy and his mother, whom the AP is not identifying because she fears retribution for speaking publicly, spent months at a camp in Matamoros, Mexico, across from Brownsville, Texas, waiting for their immigration court dates under the Trump administration program known as "Remain in Mexico."

When she lost an initial decision, she decided he would be better off temporarily with her brother in the United States. She watched him swim across the Rio Grande.

The woman expected he would be be treated the same as before, when such children were picked up by the U.S. Border Patrol and taken to Department of Health and Human Services facilities for eventual placement with a sponsor, usually a relative.

But the mother heard nothing until six days later, when her family received a call from a shelter in Honduras.

"They had thrown him out to Honduras," she said. "We didn't know anything."

The boy now lives with a family member in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Another relative has agreed to take him back to the family's rural village, if the mother returns to care for him. But she fears her former partner, who abused and threatened both of them.

Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who works with the family and leads the advocacy group Every Last One, criticized the government's treatment of the boy and other children.

"This boy has gone through multiple traumas, ending with the experience of being placed on a plane by himself and flown to a country where no one knew he was coming," she said.

Under a 2008 anti-trafficking law and a federal court settlement known as the Flores agreement, children from countries other than Canada and Mexico must have access to legal counsel and cannot be immediately deported. They are also supposed to be released to family in the U.S. or otherwise held in the least restrictive setting possible. The rules are intended to prevent children from being mistreated or falling into the hands of criminals.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency began the expulsions in late March, under the emergency declaration. The agency said it processed 166 children last month as "unaccompanied" minors, meaning they would be taken to youth holding facilities and allowed to stay in the U.S. at least temporarily, and the remaining 600 were expelled.

But the Health and Human Services Department says it received just 58 unaccompanied minors in April. Spokesmen for both agencies were not immediately able to address the discrepancy.

Just two people seeking humanitarian protection at the southern border have been allowed to stay since March 21, according to unpublished U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services data obtained by The Washington Post.

The border patrol agency says it exempts children from expulsion on a "case-by-case basis, such as when return to the home country is not possible or an agent suspects trafficking or sees signs of illness." An agency spokesman declined to provide more specifics.

Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, defended the restrictions to reporters last week, insisting the measures were a public-health response that did not amount to a new immigration policy.

"The president's proactive and aggressive containment and mitigation network of common-sense policies and initiatives with respect to covid-19 has been both historic and effective to slow the spread of the disease," Morgan said.

Information for this article was contributed by Nomaan Merchant and Sonia Perez D. of The Associated Press; and by Nick Miroff of The Washington Post.

A Section on 05/14/2020

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