(Washington) The Trump administration plans to expel nearly 700 Guatemalteque children who arrived in the United States without their parents, according to a letter sent by Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon.
These expulsions would violate the childhood protection mandate of the refugee resettlement office and the long-standing obligation of this country towards these children, he told Angie Salazar, acting director of the office of the Ministry of Health and Social Services responsible for migrant children arriving alone in the United States.
“Unaccompanied children are among the most vulnerable children entrusted to government care,” wrote the Democratic Senator, asking for the abandonment of the expulsion project. “In many cases, these children and their families had to make the unthinkable choice to face the danger and separation in search of safety. »»
Citing unidentified whistleblowers, Mr. Wyden’s letter indicates that children who do not have a legal parent or tutor as a sponsor or whose asylum request is not already underway “will be expelled from the country”.
This is a new step in the vast campaign of the Trump administration in immigration control, which provides in particular to deploy agents in Chicago for increased immigration repression, intensifying expulsions and putting an end to the protections granted to persons authorized to live and work in the United States.
The White House and the Department of Health and Social Services did not immediately respond to requests for comments on this last measure, initially reported by CNN. The Guatemalan government has refused to comment.
“This measure threatens to separate the children from their families, their lawyers and their support systems, to plunge them in the very conditions from which they seek refuge and to make vulnerable children disappear out of the reach of American law,” said Mr. Wyden’s letter.
Due to their young age and the trauma that unaccompanied migrant children have often lived when they arrived in the United States, their treatment is one of the most sensitive subjects in immigration.
Defense groups have already brought legal proceedings to ask the courts to suspend new Trump administration control procedures for unaccompanied children, affirming that these changes extend the separation of families and are inhuman.
In July, the director of immigration services for Guatemala said that the government was considering repatriating 341 unaccompanied minors detained in American centers.
“The idea is to repatriate them before they reach 18 years old so that they are not placed in a detention center for adults,” said Danilo Rivera, director of the Guatemalan Institute of Immigration. He had specified that this would be at the expense of Guatemala and that it would be a form of voluntary return.
The plan was announced by President Bernardo Arévalo, who then declared that the government had the moral and legal obligation to defend the children. His statements took place a few days after the visit of the American Secretary for Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, in Guatemala.
Migrant children traveling without their parents or tutors are given to the refugee resettlement office when they are met by the authorities on the American-Mexican border. Once in the United States, they often live in shelters supervised by the government or in foster families until they can be entrusted to a godfather-generally a family member-living in the United States.
They can request asylum, an immigration status for minors or visas for victims of sexual exploitation.
The idea of repatriating such a large number of children in their country of origin aroused concerns among activists who accompany children in immigration approaches.
“We are indignant by the new attacks by the Trump administration against the rights of migrant children,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, president and general of the immigrant Defenders Law Center.
“We do not let ourselves be deceived by their attempt to hide these efforts under simple” repatriations “”. This is a new deliberate attempt to undermine the few regular procedures that remain in the immigration system. »»
