WASHINGTON, United States.（News of the South）-More than 2000 unaccompanied children have been expelled since March from the United States of America under an emergency declaration enacted by the Trump administration.
By Antonnate S. Mugodi
The administration cited the coronavirus in refusing to provide those protections under the federal anti-trafficking and asylum laws.
Lawyers and advocates have sharply criticised the administration for using the global pandemic as a pretext to deport children to places of danger.
A 12-year-old boy from Honduras and his nine-year-old sister were made to believe that they were being taken to a shelter in the Midwest were they were to reunite with their mother but were being led elsewhere.
These two were made to sign forms that they could not read and were made to believe that they were being changed shelters.
When the boy realised that the bus was driving to the airport that is when it hit him that they had been lied to and were being taken back to Honduras.
US Customs and Border Protection declined multiple requests for comment on the boy’s story, and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement also declined, saying the children had been in Border Patrol custody until they boarded a deportation flight operated by ICE.
Spokesmen for both agencies have refused to answer most questions about how they treat roughly 70,000 adults and children expelled under the emergency declaration issued in March.
They have refused to say how they decide whether to expel children or where to detain them before expulsion, including in hotels where at least 150 unaccompanied children as young as one year old have been held.
Dr Amy Cohen, executive director of the advocacy group Every Last One, interviewed the boy several times and said she found him credible based on her conversations with hundreds of other immigrant children.
Dr Cohen said:“When he has an opportunity to exaggerate or embroider his story, he absolutely does not.
“And he is consistent with everyone he has talked to.There’s no sense that the story is rehearsed.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has argued children it is seekeing to expel are not entitled to protections under the Flores settlement, a two decade old court agreement that sets standards for the detention of immigrant children.
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