Washington, .- The Government of Donald Trump will ask the US Congress authorization to deport unaccompanied minors arriving from Central America as one of the measures to attack the current migration crisis, which has overwhelmed the capacity of government agencies to manage it.
The petition was processed by the Secretary of National Security of the USA, Kirstjen Nielsen, through a letter to the Legislative.
In the letter, Nielsen asks Congress for “authority to return unaccompanied minors to their families in their countries in a safe and orderly manner if they have no legal right to stay (in the US).”
“Currently, we can reunite many unaccompanied minors from Mexico with their families and return them to their country, when appropriate, but legally we can not do it with minors from non-contiguous countries,” Nielsen explains.
“We need authority to treat all children who arrive fairly,” he adds.
In addition to permission to deport Central American children, the Trump government will also request authority to keep families who request asylum detained until their immigration lawsuits are resolved.
Currently the detention of minors for more than 20 days is not allowed under a 1997 judicial agreement known as “Flores”, so families with children are released while their applications are being studied.
Finally, Nielsen also asks Congress to authorize people interested in seeking asylum to complete the procedures in their countries of origin in Central America “instead of undertaking the dangerous journey to the north.”
These measures would serve to attack, in the opinion of the Government, the causes of the border “emergency” and “restore order”.
Arrivals of immigrants to the United States along the southern border are at their highest levels in the last thirteen years and this March they will surpass 100,000 people.
In contrast to past migration flows, Central American asylum seekers arriving with their families and unaccompanied minors from the Northern Triangle carry great weight.
In the letter to Congress, Nielsen described as “unsustainable” the level of “vulnerable people” who arrive in large groups at the border and said that their agents “simply do not have the resources” to manage them.
The head of the US Border Patrol, Kevin McAleenan, already warned on Wednesday that the border is overflowing and that it has reached a “critical point” due to the lack of resources to manage the growing arrival of immigrants.
McAleenan acknowledged that his agents are releasing “reluctantly” immigrants arrested after making superficial checks on their background to the massification of their commissars and detention centers for immigrants. (EFEUSA)
