Miriam Jordan

But her case is not so common. Romero has been receiving treatment for Stage 4 oral cancer that needs continual attention. And she has a son, a doctoral student at Yale University who is himself in the country without legal permission, who was not about to stand idly by.

“I grew up in this country. My mother is the single biggest reason I am at a school like Yale,” her son, Cristian Padilla Romero, said of the public campaign he started to win his mother’s freedom.

“She guided me, worked three jobs to support me,” said Padilla Romero, 24, who was 7 years old when he came to the United States.

His campaign has been directed at fellow students, professors, members of Congress and the public at large. An online petition he began on Tuesday has gathered about 20,000 signatures. A GoFundMe campaign has raised more than $21,000. His mother’s plight appeared in an article in The Yale Daily News and on national immigrant advocacy social media feeds.

Padilla Romero is protected from deportation under the program known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which gives a temporary reprieve to young people who were brought into the country without authorization as children.

Many of them, also known as Dreamers, have used their temporary legal status and skills in political organizing and social media to shine a light on the actions of the immigration authorities, things that earlier might never have been made public.

This fall, students and faculty mobilized at the University of California, when at least a dozen Iranian students were denied permission to enter the United States.

“Cristian’s story is not the only story like this,” said Miriam Feldblum, who was vice president for student affairs at Pomona College when Padilla Romero was an undergraduate at the California school. “Students on campuses across the country are struggling with immigration issues. Their parents are in deportation. They are in limbo.”

Padilla Romero has reached out to Feldblum, who is a founder of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, which advocates on behalf of immigrant students. “This is someone who exemplifies the engaged student scholar on campus,” said Feldblum, whose organization is made up of university presidents and chancellors.

At Yale, Padilla Romero’s classmates have been strategizing with him, calling members of Congress in Connecticut and Georgia and sending queries to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency that is moving to deport his mother, to demand her release.

“When stuff like this comes up you drop everything,” said Joshua Aiken, a doctoral student in history and African American studies, who prepared a script for Yale students to use when telephoning ICE. “People’s families are being torn apart every day by cruel and unethical deportation policies, and so the minute Cristian told me what was happening, it was time to mobilize.”

Alicia Schmidt Camacho, chair and professor of ethnicity, race and migration at Yale, said Padilla Romero, who is her student, had made a decision to be a scholar in Central American studies to address the root cause of the crisis that unauthorized immigrant families are enduring.

“Now he’s using his own struggle to shed light on the devastating impact of deportation on our communities,” she said.

Tania Romero, 48, crossed the border illegally two decades ago and raised four children in Atlanta, juggling jobs as a housekeeper, dishwasher and laundromat attendant, sometimes all at once. Eventually, she got a full-time job in construction.

She apparently was issued an order of removal from ICE in 2008, based on her failure to show up for scheduled hearings in immigration court. But her son obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request that appear to show that she had not received any of the three notices advising her to appear in court. The letters had been returned to ICE by the U.S. Postal Service.

Though Romero knew she was in the country illegally, she did not learn she had an outstanding deportation order until she was detained in mid-August of this year, after being pulled over while driving in Gwinnett County, Georgia, Padilla Romero said.

In 2016, Romero received a diagnosis of Stage 4 oral cancer. She went through surgery as well as chemotherapy, which damaged her jaw and caused her to lose several teeth.

“It’s very hard for her to eat in general, and we are really concerned about her health in detention, where she is not receiving any special accommodation,” Padilla Romero said.

While she is not in urgent need of special medication, he said, she requires regular medical attention and is not receiving it.

The health staff at the ICE detention facility in Georgia determined that Romero had a severe vitamin B12 deficiency and recommended hospitalization, Padilla Romero said, but she was only offered remedial injections, and only after her lawyer intervened.

A request to ICE by her lawyer for a stay of deportation on humanitarian grounds because of her fragile health was denied in September.

ICE officials said they could not discuss the case. “Due to privacy restrictions, ICE is unable to comment on Tania Romero’s case,” said Lindsay Williams, a spokeswoman for the agency.

The agency’s general position has been that unauthorized immigrants are not automatically entitled to stay in the country, even in cases of people who are receiving lifesaving medical treatment. President Donald Trump has made it a priority to crack down on illegal immigration and take action against those living unlawfully inside the country.

Padilla Romero’s campaign has started to find a response. Julián Castro, the Democratic presidential candidate, shared the petition on Twitter. And Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., who represents Padilla Romero’s congressional district, is working closely with the family on the case, her office said.

But Padilla Romero learned on Wednesday that ICE had contacted Honduran authorities for travel documents that would enable his mother to be deported by the end of this week.

She has already missed an oncologist appointment, he said. In Honduras, she would not get the care she requires.

“Sending my mother back to Honduras would be a death sentence,” Padilla Romero said. “We’re not going to stop our work until she is released.”

This article originally appeared in

She's Fighting Cancer. Her Son Is Fighting Her Deportation.

It is a common occurrence: an unauthorized immigrant gets pulled over for a traffic violation, ends up in detention and swiftly is removed from the United States. In the case of Tania Romero, a Honduran mother of four who was arrested recently in Georgia, a deportation could happen within days.

Between 250 and 300 migrants marched overnight to a point midway across the Gateway International Bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas, sitting in the vehicle lanes and blocking traffic in both directions for about 15 hours.

Customs and Border Protection halted traffic across the Gateway bridge and another international crossing nearby about 1:30 a.m., an agency spokesman said, in response to protesters who were not carrying documents for legal entry into the United States.

Traffic resumed before dawn at the second crossing, but the Gateway bridge remained closed in both directions until late afternoon on Thursday, the spokesman said, with all vehicle traffic diverted to other ports of entry.

The episode unfolded amid escalating tension over the Trump administration’s increasingly rigid policies aimed at restricting the entry of migrants into the United States. The Gateway bridge is adjacent to a teeming encampment where about 1,000 migrants, mainly from Central America, have been living in squalid conditions while they await immigration court hearings in the United States.

In recent interviews, families have described children falling ill, families plagued by thugs and a growing sense of despair as U.S. authorities continue to send people back from the border.

“They are absolutely desperate, with no international presence in the camp to organize anything such as food delivery or medical care,” said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney who holds regular workshops to help migrants fill out asylum applications and learn about the legal process.

The migrant protest, which included children, occurred as the Trump administration is moving to contain a record-breaking surge in migrant families, with the biggest numbers crossing into South Texas.

Border authorities took nearly 1 million people into custody in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the highest number since 2007. But the new restrictive measures have brought about a sharp decline, with Customs and Border Protection reporting this week that about 52,000 migrants were taken into custody in September, an 18% decrease from August.

For decades, those who could reasonably argue they were fleeing persecution in their homelands could enter the United States and wait for their hearings in court. Often they stayed with relatives in the interior of the country.

But under a Trump administration program introduced in January, many migrants seeking admission to the United States are now being sent back to Mexico for the duration of their court proceedings. They are allowed to cross the border only for their hearings, often conducted in an expanding network of tent courts.

The migrants’ chances of gaining entry into the United States were further impaired last month when the Supreme Court let stand another new Trump administration policy that requires migrants who traveled through other countries en route to the United States to prove they had been denied asylum along the way before being eligible to apply at the border.

More than 50,000 migrants have been sent back from various southern border entry points, including about 120 a day who are being returned to Matamoros.

Not only has the plaza encampment near the bridge in Matamoros grown more crowded by the day, say volunteers who have worked with the group, but in a town that is notorious for drug and gang violence, some migrants have been victims of kidnapping for extortion and sexual assault.

Thursday’s protest at the bridge was peaceful, witnesses said. By early afternoon about 150 migrants remained, despite reminders by the authorities that the protocols for admission would not be waived. After a visit by immigrant advocates and the mayor of Matamoros, they dispersed in the late afternoon and the lanes reopened to traffic.

The Gateway bridge closure had caused long lines to form at two other international bridges leading into Texas, and border officials said Thursday’s scheduled immigration court hearings in Brownsville were postponed.

Emigdio Manuel García, 89, who owns a restaurant and curios shop in Matamoros about a block from the bridge, expressed exasperation over the disruption caused by the closure. “These people have been here for many months,” he said. “They are now invading the international bridge to protest and they are blocking passage.”

Garcia said the bridge was vital to the economy of both cities. The shutdown, he said, affects “people who are trying to get their kids to school, who are trying to go shopping.”

“Matamoros and Brownsville are one single city, a city joined by a bridge that is now dividing us,” he added.

There have been attempts by migrants to rush two other international bridges in South Texas in recent months. In June and July, authorities at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge intercepted a handful of migrants trying to run across. Several migrants also attempted to get across the bridge connecting Reynosa, Mexico, and Pharr, Texas.

In November last year, a peaceful march by Central American migrants waiting in Mexico across from California veered out of control as hundreds tried to evade a Mexican police blockade and run toward the border crossing into San Diego.

In response, U.S. authorities shut down the border crossing in both directions and fired tear gas to repel migrants, most of whom had been traveling as part of a large caravan.

Sit-In Protest by Migrants Closes Down Border Bridge

Amid growing tension over deteriorating conditions at the border, hundreds of migrants who had been blocked from entering the United States shut down an international bridge in South Texas on Thursday, disrupting a normally busy connection between the United States and Mexico.

Between 250 and 300 migrants marched overnight to a point midway across the Gateway International Bridge between Matamoros, Mexico, and Brownsville, Texas, sitting in the vehicle lanes and blocking traffic in both directions.

Traffic resumed a few hours later at the second crossing, but the Gateway bridge remained closed in both directions Thursday, the official said, with all vehicle traffic diverted to other ports of entry. There was no estimate of when it might reopen.

The episode comes amid growing tension over the Trump administration’s increasingly rigid policies aimed at restricting the entry of migrants into the United States. The Gateway bridge is adjacent to a teeming encampment where about 1,000 migrants, mainly from Central America, have been living in squalid conditions while they await immigration court hearings in the United States.

The migrant protest, which included children, comes as the Trump administration is moving to contain a record-breaking surge in migrant families, with the biggest numbers crossing into South Texas.

Thursday’s protest at the bridge was peaceful, witnesses said. By early afternoon about 150 migrants remained, despite reminders by the authorities that the protocols for admission would not be waived.

The Gateway bridge closure caused long lines to form at two other international bridges leading into Texas, and border officials said all scheduled immigration court hearings in Brownsville had been postponed.

There have been attempts by migrants to rush two other international bridges in South Texas in recent months. In June and July, authorities at the Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge intercepted a handful of migrants trying run across. Several migrants also attempted to get across the bridge connecting Reynosa, Mexico, and Pharr, Texas.

Asylum Protesters Close Bridge on Texas-Mexico Border

Amid growing tension over deteriorating conditions at the border, hundreds of migrants hoping for asylum in the United States spent hours Thursday shutting down an international bridge in South Texas that connects the United States and Mexico.

On Aug. 7, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, without public notice, eliminated a “deferred action” program that had allowed immigrants to avoid deportation while they or their relatives were undergoing lifesaving medical treatment.

The agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, had sent letters informing those who had asked for a renewal, which the immigrants must make every two years, that it was no longer entertaining such requests. The letters said that the immigrants must leave the country within 33 days or face deportation.

On Monday, the agency said in a statement that while limiting the program was “appropriate,” officials would “complete the caseload that was pending on Aug. 7.”

The statement said that deportation proceedings had not been initiated against anyone who had received the letter. However, it did not say whether it would continue to grant immigrants extensions to stay in the country or whether the program would be continued after current applications are processed.

When asked for clarification, an agency official said the agency “is taking immediate corrective action to reopen previously pending cases for consideration.”

“Whether a very limited version of deferred action will continue forward at USCIS is still under review. More information will be forthcoming,” said the official, who only agreed to speak on background.

Among those who had been affected by the administration’s decision to end the program was Maria Isabel Bueso, 24, who has participated in several medical studies, including a drug trial that resulted in a treatment for her rare disease, which causes dwarfism and other physical deformities.

Without the drug, Bueso and others with the genetic disorder were unlikely to live to adulthood. Her doctor, Paul Harmatz, had said that leaving the United States would lead her to quickly fall ill and die.

On hearing that she had a chance to stay in California, rather than return to Guatemala, where the drug is not available and she cannot receive the required medical care, Bueso said, “This is amazing. This is great news to wake up to.”

After The New York Times featured Bueso in an article last week, she was invited to testify before Congress in the coming days. Indignation at the policy spread on social media, and several Democratic lawmakers, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, called on the Trump administration to reverse the decision.

Bueso’s lawyer, Martin Lawler, said, “It’s unclear whether people will be granted appropriate extensions or whether people like Isabel will always be living on the knife’s edge, worried that the next extension will not be granted when they are in the middle of receiving medical treatment for their serious diseases.”

A longtime advocate for people with rare diseases, Bueso said that she planned to lobby Congress to find long-term relief for patients. “We have to find a permanent solution so that families like mine don’t have to go through this again,” she said.

Faced With Criticism, Trump Administration Reverses Abrupt End to Humanitarian Relief

LOS ANGELES — The Trump administration Monday announced that it would reconsider its decision to force immigrants facing life-threatening health crises to return to their home countries, an abrupt move last month that generated public outrage and was roundly condemned by the medical establishment.

Family breakups have been imposed with even greater frequency in recent months under the Trump administration’s most widely debated immigration policy, ostensibly to protect the welfare of the children, but in many cases because of relatively minor criminal offenses in a parent’s past, such as shoplifting or public intoxication, according to tallies the Justice Department provided to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the separations.

This month, the acting Homeland Security secretary, Kevin McAleenan, said in testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee that separations were “rare” and made only “in the interest of the child.”

“This is carefully governed, it’s overseen by a supervisor when those decisions are made,” McAleenan said, noting that fewer than 1,000 separations of children from their parents had occurred out of about 450,000 members of families encountered at the border since October 2018.

In most cases, government officials have said, border officers who make a decision to remove a child from an accompanying adult do so because there are questions about the child’s welfare, or doubts that the adult is genuinely the child’s parent. In some cases, they said, children are separated even though they are traveling with someone who clearly appears to be an aunt, uncle or sibling. Some children have appeared at the border accompanied by adults who later were determined to be using the child to try to gain entrance to the United States, officials have said.

The new numbers were filed with Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the U.S. District Court in San Diego as part of the court’s continuing supervision of the family separation issue. In its motion Tuesday, the ACLU asked the judge to clarify a set of standards for such separations that would ensure that children are taken from their parents only when there is evidence that the parent is a genuine danger to the child, or is unfit to provide care.

“The administration is still doing family separation under the guise that they are protecting children from their own parents, even though the criminal history they are citing is either wrong or shockingly minor,” said Lee Gelernt, of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “This is just circumventing the court’s order.”

Children who were separated from their families over the last year spent an average 68 days in shelters, according to the motion filed with the court, though four children have been away from their families for more than 300 days.

More than half of those separated — a total of 481 — were under age 10 at the time of separation, and 185 children were 5 or younger.

Family separations began in large numbers in the spring of 2018 under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement policy, which called for nearly all adults who entered the country illegally to face criminal prosecution. Any children accompanying them were placed in shelters or foster care. Migrant families often ended up hundreds or thousands of miles apart for weeks or longer.

A limited number of family separations also occurred under the Obama administration, though only in instances when it was clear that the parent endangered the child, former Obama administration officials have said.

The separations were central to the Trump administration’s early efforts to discourage migrant families from trying to enter the United States after traveling over land through Mexico. Arrivals of families decreased while the policy was in effect.

But images of weeping mothers and children at the border provoked an international outcry and outrage across party lines, with all four living former first ladies and Melania Trump expressing horror at the policy. Trump issued an executive order on June 20 effectively rescinding the policy by calling for any parents who are prosecuted for illegally crossing the border to be detained with their children.

Sabraw the same month issued an order to reunify all separated families, and cases of separations dropped precipitously. But they have recently been climbing rapidly, Gelernt said. By March, about 200 migrant children had been taken from parents and other relatives and placed in institutional care since the policy was officially rescinded the previous June. The total number reported to the court Tuesday — 911 separations between June 2018 and June 2019 — suggests that the practice has expanded recently, perhaps in response to a large number of migrant families entering the country in the spring.

In the first nine months of the current fiscal year, 427,881 members of families were encountered at the border, compared with 161,113 during the entire 2018 fiscal year, according to figures compiled by Customs and Border Protection.

The latest separations reported to the court, based on monthly tallies the Justice Department is required to submit to the parties in the litigation before Sabraw, are mainly based on crimes committed by the parent, according to the new documents. But ACLU lawyers argued in their motion that many of the violations are as minor as traffic tickets. In one case, a 6-year-old child was flown to a New York shelter when her mother was hospitalized in California after injuring her leg.

In testimony before Congress this month, the Border Patrol’s chief of law enforcement operations, Brian S. Hastings, said the agency has established that its agents may elect to separate a child from a parent if there is a determination that the parent or legal guardian poses a danger to the child, is otherwise unfit to care for the child, has a criminal history or a communicable disease, or is transferred to a detention setting for prosecution for a crime other than improper entry.

They may also separate a child when border officials cannot confirm that the adult is actually the child’s parent or legal guardian, or if the child’s safety is at risk, Hastings said.

But this leaves broad discretion for Border Patrol agents, something that lawyers challenging the practice in court hope to end with court-imposed standards.

“Right now, the government can separate based on any criminal history, regardless of the severity, and based on subjective criteria,” Gelernt said. “We want them only separating in specific circumstances.”

In the field, Border Patrol agents say they are mindful of the best interests of children, and of their obligation to keep them safe.

“We are not really separating anybody unless there is criminal activity already on the record,” said Jorge Rivera-Navarro, a spokesman for the Border Patrol in El Centro, California, a sector that covers 70 miles in the southeastern corner of the state near Arizona. In one recent case, he said, a member of the MS-13 gang was posing as the father of a little girl. The man was arrested and the girl was sent to a government shelter.

The new motion before the court did not lay out the full details of all 911 cases of separations, in part because the government provided only minimal details of criminal history for each case, the filing said. For many parents, the spreadsheet provided by the Justice Department did not state the nature of the criminal history at all. For many others, it did not specify whether the criminal history was a conviction or merely a charge.

“In most cases, the spreadsheet fails to indicate the age of the charge or conviction,” the court filing says. In over 75% of the cases, the spreadsheet does not even specify whether the crime was a felony or misdemeanor.”

In the 218-page filing, organizations that work with immigrants at the border and lawyers that represent them, working with the ACLU, documented a number of separations they considered questionable. The organizations included Catholic Charities, the National Immigration Justice Center, the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

In one case, a father who is identified in the court filing only by the initials ERR had sought medical attention for his daughter when she began to cough and became feverish in detention.

One day, while she was sleeping in her father’s arms, the baby wet her diaper and he did not change it because he had wanted her to keep sleeping. “A female guard took his daughter out of E.R.R.’s arms, criticized him for not changing the diaper, and called him a bad father,” the filing says. “The guard then separated E.R.R. and his infant. The government’s own documents show that E.R.R. has no other criminal history.”

The government’s report to the ACLU lists dozens of parents separated from a child as a result of traffic violations, drunken driving offenses, drug possession, and fraud or forgery offenses, according to Gelernt.

A 2-year-old child was separated from his father based on “public intoxication arrests and a D.U.I.” An 8-month-old boy was removed from his father for a “fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation arrest.” One parent was separated from a child because of an assault that took place 20 years ago, a misdemeanor offense for which he had served three days in jail.

One parent was separated from his daughter because of “malicious destruction of property, value $5,” for which he had received a six-day jail sentence with six months of probation. The child was handed over to her mother after nearly four months in custody.

An 11-year-old girl was separated from her father because of a conviction for disorderly conduct and an illegal re-entry charge. One parent was separated because of a record of shoplifting and driving without a license, according to the government spreadsheet. Another parent was separated as a result of a 2009 conviction for “resisting or obstructing an officer,” for which he received “17 days time served,” according to the filing.

There were also allegations of gang membership that were unsubstantiated, the filing said. A father accused of being a gang member was separated for six months from his children, ages 9 and 11, the filing said, until his attorney submitted a background check that showed another person in El Salvador with a similar name and date of birth who had a criminal record.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/30/us/migrant-family-separations.html" id="c87b755d-6f9c-31f8-a98b-5b2a7d50af8f">The New York Times</a>.

More Than 900 Migrant Children Have Been Separated From Their Families Over Past Year

LOS ANGELES — In the year since President Donald Trump officially ended family separations at the southern border, immigration authorities have removed more than 900 migrant children from their families, sometimes for reasons as minor as a parent not changing a baby’s diaper or having a traffic citation for driving without a license, according to new documents filed Tuesday in federal court.

In most cases, government officials have said, border officers who make a decision to remove a child from an accompanying adult do so because there are questions about the child’s welfare, or doubts that the adult is genuinely the child’s parent. In some cases, they said, children are separated even though they are traveling with someone who clearly appears to be an aunt, uncle or sibling.

LOS ANGELES — In the year since President Donald Trump officially ended migrant family separations at the southern border, immigration authorities have removed more than 900 migrant children from their families, sometimes for reasons as minor as a parent not changing a baby’s diaper or having a traffic citation for driving without a license, according to new documents filed Tuesday in federal court.

A limited number of family separations also occurred under the Obama administration, though only in instances when it was clear that the parent endangered the child, officials from the Obama administration have said.

They may also separate a child from a person purporting to be a parent or legal guardian in certain circumstances, such as when border officials cannot confirm that the adult is actually the parent or legal guardian, or if the child’s safety is at risk, he said.

The new motion before the court did not lay out the full details of all 911 cases of separations, in part because the government provided only minimal details of criminal history for each case, the filing said. For numerous parents, the spreadsheet provided by the Justice Department did not state the nature of the criminal history at all. For many others, it did not specify whether the criminal history was a conviction or merely a charge.

“In most cases, the spreadsheet fails to indicate the age of the charge or conviction,” the court filing says. In over 75% of the cases, the spreadsheet does not even specify whether the crime was a felony or misdemeanor,” according to the court filing.

In the 218-page document, organizations that work with immigrants at the border and lawyers that represent them, working with the ACLU, documented a number of separations they considered questionable. The organizations included Catholic Charities, the National Immigration Justice Center, the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center and Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.

In one case, a father who is identified in the court filing only by the initials ERR had sought medical attention for his daughter when she began to cough and became feverish in detention. He was separated from her because of a wet diaper, according to the filing.

One day, while sleeping in her father’s arms, the baby wet her diaper and he did not change it because he had wanted to allow her to keep sleeping. “A female guard took his daughter out of E.R.R.’s arms, criticized him for not changing the diaper, and called him a bad father,” the filing says. “The guard then separated E.R.R. and his infant. The government’s own documents show that E.R.R. has no other criminal history.”

A 2-year-old child was separated from his father based on “public intoxication arrests and a D.U.I.” An 8-month-old boy was removed from his father for “fictitious or fraudulent statement or representation arrest.” One parent was separated from a child because of an assault that took place 20 years ago, a misdemeanor offense for which he had served three days in jail.

One parent was separated from his daughter due to “malicious destruction of property, value $5,” for which the father had received a six-day jail sentence with six months of probation. The child was handed over to her mother after nearly four months in custody.

President Donald Trump had touted the raids — called Operation Border Resolve — as a show of force amid an influx of Central American parents and children across the southern border. After postponing the raids in June, Trump said ahead of time that they would take place last week.

Two current Department of Homeland Security officials and one former department official also confirmed to The Times that an enforcement operation would take place around mid-July.

But the publicity may have prompted many of those who had been targeted — 2,105 people in more than a dozen cities who had received final deportation orders but had not reported to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers — to temporarily leave their homes, or to move altogether to evade arrest.

Advance notice of the large-scale operation also gave immigrant advocates time to counsel families about their rights, which include not opening the door or answering questions. On social media, community groups shared detailed information about sightings of ICE agents.

In an interview Monday, Matthew Albence, acting director of ICE, which is responsible for arresting, detaining and deporting unauthorized immigrants who are in the United States, acknowledged that the number of apprehensions was low.

“I don’t know of any other population where people are telling them how to avoid arrest as a result of illegal activity,” he said. “It certainly makes it harder for us to effectuate these orders issued.”

“You didn’t hear ICE talking about it before the operation was taking place,” he added.

The arrests of the nearly three dozen migrants — 17 of whom were members of families that crossed the border together and 18 of whom were collateral apprehensions of unauthorized immigrants — were among more than 900 the immigration authorities have made since mid-May, Albence said.

From May 13 through July 11, ICE arrested 899 adults who had final deportation orders, in an undertaking called Operation Cross Check. The majority had criminal convictions, Albence said.

A backlog of nearly 1 million immigration cases means that it can take years for a case to wind its way through the courts. Those who were targeted in last week’s raids had been placed on an accelerated docket, with a goal of resolving their cases within a year. The majority had been ordered removed from the country by an immigration judge.

“What we found is that the vast majority did not even show up for their first hearing,” Albence said. “Above and beyond, we sent them letters giving them the opportunity to turn themselves in and arrange for an orderly removal process,” including time to organize their affairs and schedule flights on commercial carriers.

As part of a multipronged approach to rein in illegal immigration, Albence said that the government had also been cracking down on companies suspected of hiring unauthorized immigrants. He said 3,282 businesses across the country were told last week to submit payroll documents for review.

“Part of our goal is to reduce economic opportunities,” Albence said. “We cannot have individuals who come into the country illegally and then go find work illegally.”

The audits of companies and payroll forms, often called “silent raids,” hit restaurants, food processing, high-tech manufacturing, agriculture and other industries that employ thousands of workers, according to lawyers representing some of the companies. Employers typically lose a substantial number of workers as a result of the audits, which can also lead to fines and criminal charges against the businesses.

The Trump administration has significantly increased company inspections, often called I-9 audits for the form that workers are required to fill out affirming that they are authorized to work in the United States. There were 5,981 such audits in fiscal 2018 compared with 1,360 the previous year.

“The Trump administration has been more aggressive than any administration with I-9 investigations,” said Kimberley Robidoux, a business immigration lawyer in San Diego who specializes in compliance and who has several clients who are affected.

Still, as it grapples with a record number of migrant families at the southern border, the Trump administration has deported fewer people, on average each year, than the Obama administration.

In fiscal 2018, the Trump administration deported 256,086 immigrants, an increase of 13% over the previous year. In contrast, President Barack Obama removed 409,849 people in 2012, an all-time high, and 235,413 in fiscal 2015.

In the first two quarters of the 2019 fiscal year, the Trump administration deported 130,432 people, up from 123,253 during the same period the previous year.

Obama directed immigration authorities to target for arrest and removal convicted criminals, migrants who had crossed the border recently and those who had illegally entered the country multiple times. Trump has said that anyone agents encounter who is living in the country illegally is fair game for detention and removal.

Indeed, on Monday the Trump administration said it would accelerate the deportation of unauthorized immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years, enabling federal agents to arrest and deport people without a hearing before a judge.

The expansion of an expedited removals program, which is expected to be challenged in court, could result in people being deported without a court hearing and could affect their ability to seek asylum in the United States.

Just last week, the administration announced it would deny protections to immigrants who failed to apply for asylum in at least one country they passed through on their way north, in its latest attempt to deter Central Americans from heading to the United States. That policy was challenged in court by a coalition of immigrant advocates one day after it was announced.

The Border Patrol has arrested 363,300 migrant family members from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala at the southern border in fiscal 2019. Many of them are seeking asylum, having fled violence in their home countries.

Because children cannot be detained for more than 20 days under established standards, the Border Patrol has been releasing families, who usually turn themselves in to authorities after crossing the border, to await their immigration court dates.

“This highlights the challenges when we are unable to detain individuals at the border and are forced to release them into the country,” Albence said.

Last week, Trump deemed the operation targeting families that began around July 14 as “very successful.”

The government’s plans changed at the last minute because of news reports that had tipped off immigrants about what to expect, according to several current and former Department of Homeland Security officials. Instead of a large sweep, the authorities opted for a limited and more diffuse scale of apprehensions.

The families who were rounded up have been placed in family detention centers, where it is difficult for them to gain access to legal help. But immigration lawyers said that they could still take steps to halt their immediate deportation, for example by filing an appeal or a motion to reopen their cases. Some of the families, they said, might not have been aware they missed a court hearing if they did not receive a notice of if they had moved.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/us/ice-raids-apprehensions.html" id="25ac42ba-319e-30a6-a0e6-337acd9b122d">The New York Times</a>.

More than 2,000 migrants who were in the United States illegally were targeted in widely publicized raids that unfolded across the country last week. But figures the government provided to The New York Times on Monday show that just 35 people were detained in the operation.

More Than 2,000 Migrants Were Targeted in Raids. 35 Were Arrested.

<h1>Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Central District of California asked late Friday that an independent monitor, whom she appointed last year, ensure that conditions in detention centers are promptly addressed. </h1>

She set a deadline of July 12 for the government to report on what it has accomplished “post haste” to remedy them.

“We are hoping we can act expeditiously to resolve the conditions for children in Border Patrol custody,” said Holly Cooper, part of a team of lawyers who asked the federal court to intervene.

The lawyers’ reports on conditions at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas — where they said children were unable to bathe, were living in filthy clothes and diapers and were often hungry — prompted a public outcry and a new motion asking the court to force the government to move more aggressively to improve accommodations along the border for the thousands of migrants arriving from Central America.

Monitors from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General detailed other serious problems with overcrowding at Customs and Border Protection facilities in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley.

The new order stopped short of directly ordering the government to take action but referred the issue to the monitor to take action for the “prompt remediation” of conditions at the facilities, included the retention of an independent public health expert.

Government officials have argued that they have responded as best they can to an unexpectedly large surge of new arrivals on the southern border. They disputed the reports from lawyers who visited migrant children at Clint, and said detainees were in fact being held in decent conditions with sufficient food.

In her order, the judge said that the court had detailed previous violations by the government of a 1997 consent decree, called the Flores settlement agreement, which established standards for the care of migrant children in its custody.

Lawyers had filed a request for a temporary restraining order Thursday, saying that the government had run afoul of Flores standards.

Judge orders swift action to improve conditions for migrant children in Texas

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge has ordered a mediator to move swiftly to improve health and sanitation at Border Patrol facilities in Texas, where observers reported migrant children were subject to filthy conditions that imperiled their health.

<h1>HOMESTEAD, Fla. — About half of the roughly 2,300 children confined in a privately run Florida facility intended as a temporary shelter for migrant teenagers have been there for more than 20 days and many of them for months, despite legal standards that require children who cross the border to be speedily released or sent to state-licensed shelters that are equipped to offer longer-term care.</h1>

The Homestead center near Miami, the only one in the government’s large network of shelters run by a private, for-profit corporation, is intended to keep children for only a few days, but has been holding them for much longer as a result of the unusually large number of unaccompanied children arriving in recent months along the southwest border.

A recent population census, from June 25, showed that 1,162 children at the shelter had been there longer than 20 days. The report, obtained by The New York Times from a Homestead employee, listed 840 children who had been there more than 30 days, and 224 for at least 60 days.

A Guatemalan boy had been there the longest, 122 days, according to the report. A 14-year-old Guatemalan girl had been there 119 days.

The Homestead shelter has been the subject of close scrutiny in recent days, as overcrowding at migrant facilities along the border has led to growing concerns about the handling of migrant children not just at the border, but across the country. For several days, the Trump administration has been under attack for filthy housing conditions observers saw at a border station near Clint, Texas.

On Wednesday, before the opening presidential debate, a parade of Democratic presidential contenders streamed out to the Homestead facility to criticize the conditions under which migrant children are being held at facilities along the border.

“What is happening at Homestead to children — what is happening as the direct result of activities of the United States government — is wrong,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who led the pack. “It is a stain on our country, and we must speak out.” Following Warren later in the day were Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Jane Sanders, the wife of Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Children living at Homestead have complained that it is extremely crowded and noisy, and that they enjoy no privacy, according to reports filed with a federal court. They report feeling increasingly despondent because they have no idea when they will be released, lawyers said. Rules prohibit them from listening to music or writing in a journal. Some reported having suicidal thoughts.

Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist who has visited the facility, said the noise level was extremely high, especially in a tent with no soundproofing where “children are crammed” and teachers must use microphones to be heard above the noise.

“One child told me that many of the girls used requests for a bathroom break as a means to just briefly escape the noise and insufferable crowding, but that teachers had caught onto this and were refusing the requests,” she said.

In many shelters, children are occasionally taken on outings for a change of environment. At Homestead, Cohen said, “the children never get out of this place, unless they have a medical appointment.”

Immigrant advocates have gone to court to argue that Homestead should be required to meet the rigorous standards established for detaining migrant children — though government officials argue that the facility, operated as a temporary “influx” shelter, not a detention center, is not legally required to do so.

Under those standards, established under a 1997 consent decree, children must generally be released within about 20 days, or transferred to a licensed shelter that has comfortable living accommodations and a full education program.

Costing more than $1 million a day to operate, Homestead opened in February after the Trump administration closed a teeming tent city for migrant children in the desert at Tornillo, on the Texas border, which critics had described as a juvenile prison.

Sandwiched between a former Job Corps campus and the Homestead Air Reserve Base, the Homestead facility houses adolescents between ages 13 and 18. The facility’s beige barrackslike dormitories and white tents feel a world apart from the upscale gated communities nearby with names like Waterstone and Malibu Bay.

Evelyn Stauffer, a spokeswoman for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees government shelters, said the agency was struggling to accommodate a surge in arrivals of migrant minors, who are mainly from Central America. Shelters across the country are currently holding more than 13,000 children and are at 90% capacity, with new referrals totaling more than 52,000 children so far this year — a 60% increase over 2018.

“As you are aware, we are responding to a historical crisis at the border,” she said, adding that in the current fiscal year her agency had received more referrals than for the entire 2018 fiscal year.

In May, the average length of stay at Homestead was 35 days, she said, compared with 44 days at the state-licensed, longer-term shelters.

Tetiana Anderson, a spokeswoman for Caliburn International, the private company that operates Homestead, said in response to questions that, “Every day at the Homestead shelter, over 4,000 bilingual Caliburn employees strive to provide the highest level of care and to unite each child with a vetted sponsor as swiftly as possible.”

“The truth is the children at the Homestead temporary emergency shelter are provided a wide range of services — medical and behavioral care, daily educational classes, recreational exercise both inside and outside. The physical and emotional well-being of each and every child is the shelter’s primary concern,” she said.

After the closing of the tent camp for migrant children at Tornillo, the government announced that it would double the capacity at Homestead, which had operated briefly under President Barack Obama.

Unlike Tornillo, Homestead is operated by a for-profit company, Comprehensive Health Services, owned by Caliburn — and there is no sign that it will be functioning only temporarily.

But like the tent city in Texas, the facility in Florida is not subject to state regulations and inspections intended to guarantee child welfare — only to a loose set of Department of Health and Human Services guidelines.

In contrast, permanent shelters traditionally used to detain minors must abide by state requirements for staff vetting and training, as well as standards that ensure minors are educated and safe.

Stauffer, the spokeswoman for the refugee agency overseeing Homestead and more than 165 other migrant shelters in 23 states, said the agency was preparing to open another temporary influx shelter in Carrizo Springs, Texas, expected to hold 1,300 minors. A new permanent facility just opened that will house about 100 youngsters in Lake Worth, Florida.

The pilgrimage of Democratic candidates began Tuesday, when Rep. Eric Swalwell of California dropped in to greet a cadre of regular protesters. More than a dozen candidates are expected to visit by the end of the week; Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii scheduled stops for Thursday.

On Friday, a local congresswoman, Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell of Miami, plans to arrive with a gaggle of candidates: Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana; former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro of Texas; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York; Sen. Kamala Harris of California; former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado; and the spiritual guru Marianne Williamson.

During her visit, Warren, mobbed by television cameras, took the hand of Summit Wicks-Lim, 8, and they climbed step ladders to peek into the shelter property.

At first, there was little activity. “There’s no children out right now,” said Summit, who had come from Massachusetts with her mother.

Then, several children came out in single file, Warren said.

Some of them looked over. Warren, in sunglasses and a baseball cap, and Summit, in sunglasses and braids, waved. Warren lifted Summit up so she could see a little better.

“Los queremos!” activists yelled out to them in Spanish. We care about you.

“Estamos luchando por ustedes. No están solos,” read one of their banners. We are fighting for you. You are not alone.

Some of the protesters raised big red cardboard hearts.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/us/homestead-migrant-children-shelter.html" link="null" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

At a Florida Shelter, Days Become Months for Migrant Children

Miriam Jordan

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