PSA: Something We Can Do for Migrants, Right Now

⚠️ EMERGENCY ALERT ⚠️

The gov't announced a plan to mass release families from detention centers. For months they’ve kept families for longer than the 20 days they are legally allowed, but now, they are suddenly mass releasing THOUSANDS with NO plans to ensure their safety.

— ?????? (@RAICESTEXAS) October 26, 2018

Link to the Houston Chronicle:

President Donald Trump’s administration is releasing thousands of Central American families after briefly detaining them at the border, overwhelming nonprofits from El Paso to San Diego who are suddenly scrambling to find them temporary housing and transportation to their final destination.

The “coordinated release” began earlier this month in Arizona, where nonprofits had to rent motel rooms to handle the influx. This week, federal officials asked Annunciation House, an El Paso shelter, to take in 1,300 adults and children with even more expected next week. In San Diego, Pastor Bill Jenkins said his church was told to anticipate as many as 150 migrants a day, double its usual intake…

The number of families coming here has steadily increased for months since the administration ended its controversial practice of family separation in June with a near-record 16,658 arriving in September, a 30 percent jump from August…

Usually migrant families apprehended at the border were processed and, if there was space, transferred to the three federal detention centers that hold immigrant families — two outside San Antonio and one in Pennsylvania.

The remainder were released, typically with GPS-enabled ankle monitors or other forms of supervision and provided notices to appear in the backlogged immigration courts.

The agency “no longer has the capacity” to conduct the additional review procedure without risking the violation of how long minors can be detained, an ICE spokeswoman said in a statement.

As a result, starting on Columbus Day weekend in Arizona, and now expanding to across the southern border, families are being freed en masse in greater numbers than before, with the burden of providing temporary shelter and travel coordination falling solely to nonprofits…

A 1997 legal settlement known as Flores prevents the detention of minors for longer than 20 days and has forced the administration to release most parents with their children, a practice Trump has consistently railed against. Critics say many don’t show at their later court hearings or if they do, they take months or years to conclude…

Bridget Cambria, an immigration attorney in Pennsylvania who often works in the Berks family detention center, said she views “coordinated release” this month as an attempt to pressure the undoing of the Flores Settlement.

“They see an emergency coming with the caravan and they have a narrative they want to use to make sure we continue much higher enforcement and the No. 1 target is obviously Flores,” she said. “If they can purport to have a surge they can use it as a reason to try get rid of it all together.”…

More detail at the link. My cynical interpretation is that Trump’s minions are lying about the number of beds they’ve got available because they want to ‘punish’ us bleeding-heart liberals for not letting them break up families and keep children in cages. And if it just so happens that ‘the optics’ of a sudden uptick in brown-skinned non-English-speaking wandering the streets of border cities looking for shelter should enflame Trump’s xenophobic, fearful base… well, twofer!

But we need your help.

Tonight our team of 100+ lawyers & case workers are mobilizing support these families. Chip in if you can: https://t.co/DFJ6RjmbXB

This is a moment where we as Americans can prove we’re not going to let cruel leadership define us.

— ?????? (@RAICESTEXAS) October 26, 2018

(RAICES’s page on Charity Navigator)