When Immigration Matters

On June 20, 2018, President Trump issued an executive order which, on its face, appeared to reunite immigrant children with their parents from whom they had been separated at the border.  In reality, the order created additional chaos and revealed the incompetence, disarray and lack of leadership of the current administration. The government was unable to meet the court-imposed July deadlines for reunification, and the court then granted an extension.  The Trump administration vowed to take all necessary efforts to reunify the families and indicated that it was fully committed to the process.  Two months have passed since Trump issued his executive order. The question remains, “How far have we come in reunifying those families?”

On June 20, 2018, President Trump issued an executive order which, on its face, appeared to reunite immigrant children with their parents from whom they had been separated at the border.  In reality, the executive order has created additional chaos and revealed the incompetence, disarray and lack of leadership in the current administration.  Initially, the administration indicated that it would reunite all children younger than 5 with their families by a July 10, 2018 deadline. Yet, just one day after that announcement, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar notified the public that the administration would not meet that deadline and that it needed an extension. Sarah Fabian, an attorney for the Justice Department, explained that the administration does not know where over 20% of those young children are because their parents were released from ICE custody. In a status hearing with United States District Court Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California, government lawyers stated that they would only be able to reunify about half of the 100 children under the age of 5 by the court mandated deadline of July 10. The lawyers also admitted that they could not locate the parents of 38 migrant children under the age of 5.  The parents of 19 of the children  have been released from custody into the United States and their whereabouts are unknown.  The parents of the remaining 19 children have been deported. 

On June 24, 2018 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in Trump v. Hawaii to uphold a travel ban from seven predominantly Muslim countries:  North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Venezuela. The 5-4 ruling by the Court is the first substantive decision on a Trump administrative policy and sends a strong message that Trump has expansive powers under immigration law to protect national borders.  Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts stated that the president had ample statutory authority to make national security judgments in the realm of immigration. Roberts argued that the ban wasn’t anti-Muslim because it was “facially neutral” and that it was within the president’s legitimate exercise of his power to defend the United States through immigration courts.  “The sole prerequisite,” Roberts wrote, “is that the entry of covered aliens’ ‘would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.’  The president has undoubtedly fulfilled that requirement here.” Roberts explained that Trump had ordered an evaluation of every country’s compliance with the risk assessment and then issued his findings. “Based on that review, the president found that restricting entry of aliens who could not be vetted with adequate information was in the national interest.”  Roberts argued that although the ban applies to five countries with Muslim majority populations, “that fact alone does not support an inference of religious hostility.” Those countries contained only 8% of the world’s Muslim population.

President Trump’s executive order on immigrant children seeks a balance between his “zero tolerance” policy for families crossing the border and ending the practice of separating children from their parents.   The June 20, 2018 executive order came after growing criticism of Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which calls for prosecution of all immigrants who come to the United States illegally. Trump’s policy required parents and children travelling together to be separated.  Parents were referred for prosecution and taken into federal custody.  Children were taken to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which placed them with sponsors (e.g., family members) or sent them to shelters or foster homes.  Under Trump’s executive order, parents will now be detained alongside their children.  Although Trump claims that the executive order adequately addresses the fervent public criticism about his immigration policy, the order raises new and unsolved issues.

Karen-Lee was featured in Law360's Expert Analysis Section writing about President Trump's deportation plan.