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Immigrants Eligible for Asylum are Still Being Arrested
Five years ago Barack Obama put a law into place that allowed families, i.e. women with children that are minors, that have shown that they are eligible to asylum in the US, to be released from custody while awaiting their court hearing. Some might think that this is not an efficient way to detain illegal immigrants, but a recent study shows that 92% of asylum seekers that are released awaiting their court hearing report back to their immigration officers.
With the recent influx of immigrants from Central American countries the law protecting women and their minor children has been overlooked. We are now in a situation where women and their children, including babies, are being sent to prison even though they have shown that they are eligible for asylum. This might seem like the right thing to do to some people, but for the experts that are watching these children wither away in jail cells, this is not even remotely okay. Placing children in prison, or in prison like conditions, for crimes that they have not committed is a hard thing for them to deal with psychologically. Not only have they just been uprooted and moved to a new country, they also have to sit in a jail cell with their mother until a court will see them if they do not get an immigration bond. People might agree that adults awaiting trial should be held in prison, but children? The law that President Obama put into place was to benefit children, and he put it into place once, why are we moving backwards?