US expels 8,800 migrant children under coronavirus rules

A child traveling with a caravan of migrants from Central America sits at a camp near the San Ysidro checkpoint, after US border authorities allowed the first small group of women and children entry from Mexico overnight, in Tijuana, Mexico May 1, 2018. File photo: Reuters                                   President Donald Trump’s administration has expelled about 8,800 unaccompanied migrant children intercepted at the US-Mexico border since March 20 under rules seeking to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus in the United States, according to court documents filed Friday by the Justice Department.

The administration had declined to disclose the numbers since June, when it said about 2,000 children had been expelled. Immigration advocates had argued that many more were likely subject to the rules, but the scope of the expulsions was not clear until Friday.

The administration implemented new border rules on March 21 that scrapped decades-old practices under laws meant to protect children from human trafficking and offer them a chance to seek asylum in a US immigration court.

The administration said the emergency rules were designed to avert coronavirus outbreaks inside migrant holding facilities and among the broader US population.

Since then, US officials have been quickly removing migrants, including unaccompanied minors, without standard immigration proceedings.

Trump, seeking reelection on November 3, has taken a hard line toward legal and illegal immigration as president.

Immigration advocates have argued that the new regulations put migrants, especially children, at grave risk. The federal government has been holding them for days or sometimes weeks in hotels with unlicensed contractors to look after them. Attorneys have said the children’s personal information is not recorded in the usual computer systems, making them almost impossible to track.

In June, US Customs and Border Protection chief Mark Morgan said that about 2,000 unaccompanied children had been expelled under the order.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the administration over the order in June, and the agency has declined to update the numbers since then, citing pending litigation.

The government produced the figures in a Justice Department filing to the San Francisco-based 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals objecting to a September 4 order that it stop holding children in hotels before expelling them.