Parents Fearing Deportation Make Guardianship Plans "In Case Mommy Doesn't Come Home"
As the world eagerly awaits new details on Trump's future immigration policies, organisations around the country are being flooded with requests from illegal immigrants for legal assistance in drafting temporary guardianship papers just in case ICE officials raid their places of work.
Per Reuters:
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) advocacy group has been receiving about 10 requests a day from parents who want to put in place temporary guardianships for their children, said spokesman Jorge-Mario Cabrera. Last year, the group said it received about two requests a month for guardianship letters and notarization services.
At the request of a nonprofit organization, the National Lawyers Guild in Washington D.C. put out a call this week for volunteer attorneys to help immigrants fill out forms granting friends or relatives the right to make legal and financial decisions in their absence [power of attorney].
In New Jersey, immigration attorney Helen Ramirez said she is getting about six phone calls a day from parents. Last year, she said, she had no such calls.
"Their biggest fear is that their kids will end up in foster care," Ramirez said.
Immigrant
Meanwhile, the alleged "panic" comes as ICE and other immigration officials say that families, consistent with policies under the Obama administration, will be granted access to lawyers and consular officials to help parents execute powers of attorney for their children to the extent it become necessary.
For parents of U.S. citizens who are ordered removed, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency "accommodates, to the extent practicable, the parents' efforts to make provisions" for their children, said ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez. She said that might include access to a lawyer, consular officials and relatives for detained parents. WE'VE SEEN ZERO EVIDENCE THAT THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION PLANS TO COORDINATE WITH ANY CONSULARS OR FOREIGN STATES.
During the previous administration of President Barack Obama, a Democrat, the likelihood of both parents being deported was slim, Capps said.
He doubts there will be a huge shift under Republican Trump toward deporting both parents.
"The odds are still very low but not as low as they were – and this is just the beginning of the administration," he said.
About five million children under the age of 18 are living with at least one parent who is in the country illegally, according to a 2016 study by MPI. Most of the children, 79 percent, were U.S. citizens, the study found.
Trump allegedly, and quite suddenly, launched a "crackdown" on illegal immigrants that resulted in 680 detentions in a matter of a week.
That said, any one of the media outlets covering the story could have easily looked at "removal" statistics published by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and within seconds realized that Obama removed, on average, 4,620 illegal immigrants per week during his last year in office, or roughly 580% more than the 680 detentions that caused much of the progressive left to suffer a nervous breakdown in mid-February.
ICE Stats
So was the media just too lazy to check the facts or just too willing to ignore the facts in an effort to push the latest 'fake news' narrative? Bit of both, maybe? As always, we leave it to readers to decide.
For now Obama still holds the title Deporter and Chief. For better are worse he was the great deporter and managed
to do so without breaking up families. Let's not be sloppy people. We're better than that.
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Well the media hates Trump, so he is blasted for doing things that many other presidents have done, even things that are common practice.
As for the children, that's a huge dilemma. On the one hand, the parents shouldn't have been here in the first place. They brought it on themselves. When they had children, they KNEW they could be deported. But that doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the children. With younger children, I think they should be deported with the parent. Unfortunately they are citizens, and that can't be done. It should be an option though. For older children, like teens, deportation is a much inferior option.
There is no good solution for the children. The situation should not have happened in the first place, but it did. Now there is only a lesser of the evils on how to deal with it.
Trump doesn't care. Nor do his voters.