You turn to us for voices you won't hear anywhere else.

Sign up for Democracy Now!'s Daily Digest to get our latest headlines and stories delivered to your inbox every day.

Obama to Seek Congressional Waiver for Speedier Deportation of Migrant Children

HeadlineJun 30, 2014

President Obama is asking Congress for fast-track authority and additional funding to speed the deportation of migrant children fleeing violence and poverty in Central America. The White House says Obama will submit an emergency request to waive anti-trafficking rules that prevent children from being immediately deported. If approved, the government could avoid regulations mandating the children’s transfer to the care of the Department of Health and Human Services, which is tasked with acting in the children’s “best interests,” not forcing automatic deportation. The waiver would apply to children from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, the home countries for most of the 52,000 unaccompanied children seized on the border since October. Obama will also ask lawmakers for at least $2 billion to pay for more immigration judges and faster deportations. Speaking to ABC News, President Obama made an appeal to the parents of unaccompanied children.

President Obama: “Our message absolutely is don’t send your children unaccompanied on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don’t even know how many of these kids don’t make it and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed because they fell off a train. We have no way of tracking that. So, that is our direct message to the families in Central America: Do not send your children to the borders. If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”

Obama is expected to formally seek the fast-track deportation authority in a letter to Congress today. According to the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, 58 percent of unaccompanied children detained by the United States could be entitled to refugee protections under international law.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

Non-commercial news needs your support

We rely on contributions from our viewers and listeners to do our work.
Please do your part today.
Make a donation
Top