CGRS denounces the new Executive Order on the separation of immigrant families issued by the White House yesterday. The Order offers no solution for the thousands of families who have already been separated and, troublingly, calls for an expansion of the use of family detention. The Order also seeks to erode critical standards for the care and custody of immigrant children. Family detention is not an acceptable alternative to family separation, and neither children nor immigrants and asylum seekers should ever be subjected to indefinite, unnecessary imprisonment.
Today Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a deeply disappointing decision in an attempt to erode protections for domestic violence survivors and others who look to the United States for refuge. Invoking a rarely utilized power, Sessions reversed the Board of Immigration Appeals’ grant of asylum to a Salvadoran domestic violence survivor in a case known as Matter of A-B-. CGRS will be tracking closely adjudicators’ application of today’s decision and strategically intervening in cases to push back against Sessions’ erroneous and harmful interpretation of the law. We will not allow the Attorney General to turn back the clock on women and others fleeing life-threatening violence.
CGRS Calls for an End to the Cruelty of Family Separation; Joins National Day of Action for Children
In its latest assault on immigrants and asylum seekers, the Trump Administration has dramatically escalated its efforts to separate families at the border. Earlier this month, in the span of just two weeks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forcibly separated 658 children from their parents under its new “zero tolerance” policy. CGRS condemns this heartless and unlawful attack on children and families and calls on allies nationwide to join us in Friday’s National Day of Action for Children.
