Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


New Trump Family Detention Rule Faces Legal Challenges, Tight Space

Reuters

   NEW YORK - A coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia, led
   by California and Massachusetts, said on Monday they will sue the Trump
   administration to stop a sweeping new rule to indefinitely detain
   migrant families seeking to settle in the United States.

   The lawsuit, which is to be filed in federal court in California, will
   be only the first of what is expected to be a flurry of lawsuits aimed
   at blocking the rule, officially published on Friday, from taking
   effect in October.

   However, the Trump administration's effort to overturn a two-decade-old
   legal settlement limiting how long migrant children can be detained is
   likely to face more than just legal hurdles.

   Even if the courts allow the rule to take effect, there are also
   practical problems: paying for thousands of additional family detention
   beds.

   U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has only three family
   detention facilities -- two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania -- that
   have between 2,500 and 3,000 beds, Acting Secretary of Homeland
   Security Kevin McAleenan said in announcing the new rule last week.

   More than 42,000 families, mostly from Central America, were arrested
   along the U.S. southern border just last month. The July arrest numbers
   are at record highs, even though they have dropped more than half
   compared with levels seen in May.

   "Even if the number of border crossings doesn't go back up in the fall,
   all this (new rule) would enable them to do is to detain a relatively
   small percentage of the arriving families for longer," said Kevin
   Landy, a former ICE assistant director responsible for the Office of
   Detention Policy and Planning under the Obama administration.

   Shawn Neudauer, a spokesman for ICE, said the agency could not comment
   on potential increases to the agency's detention capacity.

   The new rule seeks to scrap the 1997 agreement, known as the Flores
   settlement, which puts a 20-day limit on how long children can be held
   in immigration detention.

   The court overseeing the settlement expanded its interpretation in 2015
   to apply not just to unaccompanied children but also to children
   traveling with their parents.

   Trump administration officials have said the detention limits have
   become a "pull" factor for migrants who bet that if they show up at the
   U.S.-Mexico border with a child and ask for asylum, they will be
   quickly let go to wait for a hearing in U.S. immigration court. Trump
   has decried this as a "catch-and-release" practice.

   Without more space, that practice is likely to continue, Landy said.
   "The longer they keep those families, the fewer new arrivals they can
   detain, which means the Border Patrol is releasing more people overall"
   while a small percentage of families suffer the impacts of prolonged
   detention, he said.

.