Trump moves to end limits on detention of migrant children

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Trump moves to end limits on detention of migrant children

2019-08-22 06:07 Last Updated At：06:20

The Trump administration is moving to end an agreement limiting how long migrant children can be kept in detention, the president's latest effort to curb immigration at the Mexican border.

A court fight is almost certain to follow, challenging the attempt to hold migrant families until asylum cases are decided.

A current settlement overseen by the federal courts now requires the government to keep children in the least restrictive setting and to release them as quickly as possible, generally after 20 days in detention.

Homeland Security officials say they are adopting their own regulations that reflect that "Flores agreement," which has been in effect since 1997. They say there is no longer a need for the court involvement, which was only meant to be temporary. But the new rules would allow the government to hold families in detention much longer than 20 days.

It is the latest effort by the administration to tighten immigration, President Donald Trump's signature issue, and is aimed at restricting the movement of asylum seekers in the country and deterring more migrants from crossing the border. The news immediately generated fresh outrage, following reports of dire conditions in detention facilities, and it is questionable whether courts will let the administration move forward with the policy.

Trump defended it, saying: "I'm the one that kept the families together."

But immigrant advocates and Democrats decried the new regulations, saying prolonged detention would traumatize immigrant children.

"The administration is seeking to codify child abuse, plain and simple," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said in a statement.

Peter Schey, a lawyer for the immigrant children in the Flores case and president of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, said if the regulations don't match the settlement in that case, "they would be in immediate material breach, if not contempt of court."

"I think all these things are now part of the 2020 campaign," Schey said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said Wednesday the regulations create higher standards to govern family detention facilities. The facilities will be regularly audited, and the audits made public.

The regulations are expected to be formally published Friday and go into effect in 60 days absent legal challenges.

Holly Cooper, co-director of the immigration law clinic at University of California, Davis and a lawyer in the Flores case, said attorneys haven't seen the final rule and will have a week to brief a federal judge, who will weigh whether they are consistent with the settlement.

The government's proposed rule, she said, wouldn't have let lawyers monitor conditions in border facilities and would have dramatically changed how long children could be detained and the standards for their care.

"We're going to have a world that looks a lot like the internment of families and children, where we have basically regularized prison as a default for families seeking political asylum in this country," she told reporters.

The rule follows moves last week to broaden the definition of a "public charge" to include immigrants on public assistance, potentially denying green cards to more immigrants. There was also a recent effort to effectively end asylum altogether at the southern border.

There has been a drastic increase in the number of families crossing the border — about 475,000 so far this budget year, nearly three times the previous full-year record for families. Most are released into the U.S. while their asylum requests wind through the courts — a practice Trump has derided as "catch-and-release."

The Flores agreement has been in effect since 1997 but mostly was applied to children who came to the country alone. In 2015, U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee ruled the requirements were applicable to children who crossed the border with families, after the Obama administration built family detention centers and started detaining families until their cases were completed.

Homeland Security did not say how long it expects families to be kept, but McAleenan said under the previous administration it was about 50 days.

He said, "The intent is for a fair and expeditious proceeding."

Asylum cases involving detained families move much more quickly than cases for families released, taking months instead of years to resolve, in part because there are none of the delays that result when immigrants fail to show up for hearings.

The government operates three family detention centers that can hold a total of about 3,000 people. One is being used for single adults, and the other two are at capacity.

McAleenan said he didn't expect to need more bed space because, together with other efforts to restrict the flow of migrants, he expects fewer people to be coming.

Immigrant advocates, in contrast, said they believed the change would put many more immigrants into detained court proceedings, slowing the process and keeping children locked up for longer.

"This is unnecessarily cruel and frankly evil," Jess Morales Rocketto, chair of Families Belong Together, told reporters. "The idea that this administration and its agencies can be trusted to do self-regulation and follow the rules is completely ridiculous."

The massive influx of Central American families to the U.S.-Mexico border has greatly strained the system and foiled Trump's tough talk on immigration, though agreements by Mexico to clamp down on migrants and a new agreement with Guatemala forcing migrants to claim asylum there instead of heading north are expected to reduce the flow.

Trump administration officials have also forced more than 30,000 people to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico. It's not clear how this change would affect that policy.

The Flores agreement sets standards of care for children who cross the border alone as well as with families. Lawyers in the case recently spoke out about what they said were deplorable, filthy conditions for children held at border facilities not meant to hold large groups of people for very long.

A report this week by the independent monitor overseeing claims of government noncompliance with Flores rules detailed the extreme overcrowding and poor conditions that immigrant youths faced in detention.

For example, a Border Patrol station in in Clint, Texas, an El Paso suburb, had a stated capacity for 105 children. On June 1, there were 676. Lawyers who visited in June described squalid conditions. Children cared for toddlers, the lawyers said, with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

A federal appeals panel found last week that detained children should get edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste under the agreement, after a bid to limit what must be provided.

Venice tests a 5-euro entry fee for day-trippers as the Italian city grapples with overtourism

2024-04-26 03:49 Last Updated At：03:50

VENICE, Italy (AP) — Under the gaze of the world’s media, the fragile lagoon city of Venice launched a pilot program Thursday to charge day-trippers a 5-euro ($5.35) entry fee that authorities hope will discourage visitors from arriving on peak days and make the city more livable for its dwindling residents.

Visitors arriving at Venice's main train station were greeted with large signs listing the 29 dates through July of the plan's test phase that also designated separate entrances for tourists, and residents, students and workers.

“We need to find a new balance between the tourists and residents,’’ said Simone Venturini, the city’s top tourism official. “We need to safeguard the spaces of the residents, of course, and we need to discourage the arrival of day-trippers on some particular days.”

Not all residents, however, are persuaded of the efficacy of the new system in dissuading mass tourism, insisting that only a resurgence in the population will restore balance to a city where narrow alleyways and water buses are often clogged with tourists.

Hundreds of Venetians protested against the program, marching festively though the city's main bus terminal behind banners reading “No to Tickets, Yes to Services and Housing.” Protesters scuffled briefly with police with riot gear who blocked them from entering the city, before changing course and entering over another bridge escorted by plainclothes police officers. The demonstration wrapped up peacefully in a piazza.

Tourists arriving at the main station encountered almost as many journalists as stewards on hand to politely guide anyone unaware of the new requirements through the process of downloading the QR code to pay the fee.

Arianna Cecilia, a tourist from Rome visiting Venice for the first time, said she thought it was “strange” to have to pay to enter a city in her native country, and be funneled through separate entrance ways for tourists. She and her boyfriend were staying in nearby Treviso, and so downloaded the QR code as required. But she was still caught off-guard while soaking in her first view ever of Venice's canals by the sight of the entrance signs and her boyfriend telling her to get out the ticket.

On the other side of the entrance ways, workers in yellow vests carried out random checks at the train station. Transgressors face fines of 50 to 300 euros ($53 to $320), but officials said “common sense” was being applied for the launch.

The requirement applies only for people arriving between 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. Outside of those hours, access is free and unchecked.

Venice has long suffered under the pressure of overtourism, and officials hope that the pilot project can help provide more exact figures to better manage the phenomenon.

The city can track the number of hotel visitors, which last year numbered 4.6 million and is down 16% from pre-pandemic highs. But the number of day visitors, which make up the majority of the crowds in Venice, could only be estimated until recently.

A Smart Control Room set up during the pandemic has been tracking arrivals from cellphone data, roughly confirming pre-pandemic estimates of 25 million to 30 million arrivals a year, said Michele Zuin, the city’s top economic official. That includes both day-trippers and overnight guests.

But Zuin said the data is incomplete.

“It’s clear we will get more reliable data from the contribution” being paid by day-trippers, he said.

Venturini said the city is strained when the number of day-trippers reaches 30,000 to 40,000. On peak days, local police set up one-way traffic for pedestrians to keep the crowds moving.

Residents opposing the day-tripper tax insist that the solution to Venice's woes are to boost the resident population and the services they need, limiting short-term rentals to make available more housing and attract families back from the mainland.

Last year, Venice passed a telling milestone when the number of tourist beds exceeded for the first time the number of official residents, which is now below 50,000 in the historic center with its picturesque canals.

“Putting a ticket to enter a city will not decrease not even by one single unit the number of visitors that are coming,’’ said Tommaso Cacciari, an activist who organized a protest Thursday against the measure.

“You pay a ticket to take the metro, to go to a museum, an amusement park. You don’t pay a ticket to enter a city. This is the last symbolic step of a project of an idea of this municipal administration to kick residents out of Venice,” he said.

Venice Mayor Luigi Brugnaro declared the launch day, coinciding with an Italian holiday, a success, registering 15,700 paying visitors, 50% more than anticipated.

More than 97,000 others had downloaded a QR code denoting an exemption, including to work in Venice or as a resident of the Veneto region. Hotels in Venice, including in mainland districts like Marghera or Mestre, provided a QR code for visitors to attest to their stay, which includes a hotel tax — accounting for 40,000 of those.

Venturini, the tourist official, said that interest in Venice’s pilot program has been keen from other places suffering from mass tourism, including other Italian art cities, and municipalities abroad such as Barcelona, Spain, and Amsterdam.

But Marina Rodino, who has lived in Venice for 30 years, doesn't see the fee as the cure-all. Neighboring apartments in her residential building near the famed Rialto Bridge once inhabited by families are now short-term apartment rentals.

The corner butcher shop closed. Yet she noted that the new entrance fee requirement will still allow young people to flood the city in the evening for the traditional aperitivo, which can grow rowdy.

She was passing out mock European Union passports for “Venice, Open City,” underlining the irony of the new system, and challenging its legal standing with citations from the Italian Constitution guaranteeing its citizens the right to “move or reside freely in any part of the national territory."

“This is not a natural oasis. This is not a museum. It is not Pompeii. It is a city, where we need to fight so the houses are inhabited by families, and stores reopen. That is what would counter this wild tourism,’’ Rodino said.