In related news, a federal court on Wednesday blocked the Trump administration from deporting unaccompanied migrant children under a policy that allowed immigration officials to quickly deport asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border without due process, citing COVID-19. Some 13,000 unaccompanied children have been deported during the pandemic.
This comes as immigration rights advocates are demanding the release of 28 children and their families who were placed in expedited deportation proceedings by ICE. Advocates say the families’ initial asylum pleas were botched by officials, resulting in the rejection of their credible fear claims. This is Alexa, a girl who was imprisoned by ICE for 11 months.
Alexa: “Why did they say children have rights in this country, when in this detention center children don’t have rights? It was horrible, because I was sick and my mother was sick, and the medical staff there, they did not want to help us. When we were finally released from detention, they discovered my mom had cancer. There was discrimination in this detention center. Immigration officials yelled at us. They treated us less than human. They did horrible things to us in that detention center.”
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