US Border Patrol Agency Violated Its Own Rules in Deporting Thousands of Children Amanda Holpuch - The Guardian
go to original July 19, 2015

US border patrol agents violated agency rules in deporting thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children from 2009 to 2014, according to a federal audit released last week.

The US Government Accountability Office audit said that US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) repatriated 93% of unaccompanied children under age 14 from Mexico and Canada without documenting how they decided that the children would be safe when they return to their home countries.

Jennifer Podkul, a senior program officer for the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, is one of several people to have questioned how effective the CBP process is in earlier reports.

“The part that is illegal is not that they have not been giving them documentation, the part that’s illegal is that they have not been adequately screening them according to the law,” Podkul said.

The GAO report was released on Tuesday, the same day that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement said it had released about 200 Central Americans in just over a week as it sped up the interview process used to determine whether those people would be in danger if repatriated. Advocates like Human Rights First say asylum seekers should generally not be held in detention centers.

Detention centers have been overwhelmed by the recent spike in unaccompanied child migrants, who primarily come from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, and cross the Mexico border to get into the US.

Read the rest at The Guardian

Related: Migrants Share Their Most Cherished Belongings in Photo Essay (PBS)

Photo: Elvert Barnes

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!