Obama Administration Response to Border Crisis: More Deportations
In response to mounting political pressure to address the crisis in U.S-Mexico border detention centers, the Obama Administration is putting plans into action to speed up deportations—a move critics slam as a “step backwards for immigration policy.”
Efforts to achieve the faster deportations include accelerating immigration trials and opening additional detention centers, as well as increasing the use of tracking devices such as ankle bracelets to keep track of immigrants after they are released and awaiting trials for deportation, The New York Times reports.
“It’s a real step backwards for immigration policy,” Bob Libal, the executive director of Grassroots Leadership, which advocates for alternatives to detention, told the Huffington Post. “Detention should always be used as a last option … the harm that comes from children from being detained is well-documented, and if we don’t have to do this, we shouldn’t be doing it.”
The humanitarian crisis at the border has once again stirred up anti-immigrant sentiment at many levels. The union representing more than 16,000 border patrol agents wrote on its Twitter feed last weekend complaining of “Babysitting, Diaper Changing, Burrito Wrapping,” although the tweet was removed after immigration advocates called it racist. An op-ed in the Guardian on Friday noted the role the Associated Press has played in dehumanizing the debate around the crisis by referring to the children as “detainees” rather than just children.
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