Miller policy using pandemic to stop asylum has expelled children over 13,000 times since March

The Trump administration has quickly and without due process expelled children from the United States over 13,000 times since March under White House aide and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller policy that has used the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to shut down asylum at the southern border, BuzzFeed News reports. 

“The figure represents a major jump in child expulsions since the CDC issued an order allowing border officials to expel nearly all immigrants crossing from Mexico as the coronavirus was spreading rapidly across the world in March,” BuzzFeed News said. But the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reportedly told the administration there was no valid public health reason for such an order in the first place. The administration forced the agency into signing it anyway.

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The reason Miller and gang have wanted this policy is because they’ve used it to stomp on the rights of children seeking asylum, bypassing the immigration court system entirely to quickly kick them out. They claimed at the time that the policy was going to be temporary. That was, of course, a lie, because it’s since been extended indefinitely. Since its implementation, expulsions of children have now skyrocketed from the hundreds into the thousands.

“Expulsions are legally different than deportations,” BuzzFeed News continued, “which would mean an immigrant had actually undergone the immigration process and found to not be legally allowed to stay in the US. Critics say the government is using the public health orders as an excuse to violate federal laws that govern the processing of unaccompanied minors at the border.”

That’s exactly what it’s been doing, leading health experts say in criticizing CDC Director Robert Redfield for giving in to the administration’s pressure and putting politics over science and humanity. “The nation’s public health laws should not be used as a pretext for overriding humanitarian laws and treaties that provide life-saving protections to refugees seeking asylum and unaccompanied children,” they wrote earlier this year.

“This is an enormous number of children who are being summarily sent back without any due process, potentially to serious or fatal danger,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt told BuzzFeed News. But the administration is still seeking to go even further to pressure the CDC in order to continue abusing children and disregarding their rights. 

The Washington Post reported earlier this month that the administration has been trying to force the CDC into endorsing its unlawful policy detaining asylum-seeking children in hotels. While a judge ordered a stop to the administration’s practice of detaining kids at hotels while it seeks to quickly expel them, CDC officials told the Post that Trump officials have been pressuring the CDC to sign an order supporting the practice in an attempt to justify it to the court.

So far, the CDC has declined. Good, but at the same time they already gave in to the initial policy that has resulted in thousands of expulsions. It’s a policy that right now has no end in sight—unless we work to change that ourselves.

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