Border Crisis: Judiciary Committee GOP Demand DOJ Explain Settlement With ACLU Over Separated Migrants
“As if the Department’s stipulation is not egregious enough, the settlement also allows an illegal alien to escape criminal prosecution for illegally crossing the border solely because the alien is traveling with a child.”
Republicans on the Judiciary Committee demanded the Department of Justice hand over information on its settlement with the ACLU that blocks President Donald Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” policy concerning separated migrants at the border.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Chairman Tom McClintock sent the letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“Under the proposed settlement, certain illegal aliens can receive a grab-bag of U.S. taxpayer-funded services, including behavioral health services, medical assistance, temporary housing support, legal services, and expedited processing — all because in 2018 the U.S. government prosecuted, under the existing criminal code enacted by Congress, illegal aliens for illegally entering the United States with their children,” wrote the two men.
Here are more details of the “grab bag” (DHS emphasis):
- The government will provide behavioral health services for a period of three years. These services are a continuation of the same child-centered pre-reunification counseling, clinical treatment services, behavioral health case management, and parenting support already being provided under an existing contract.
- The government will provide certain medical assistance by covering the cost of the copayments incurred by class members when receiving medical services at Federally Qualified Health Centers during a 12-month eligibility period.
- The government will provide temporary housing support by making housing assistance available to class members as determined necessary by a third-party administrator during a 12-month eligibility period. This may include assistance in locating housing, paying costs necessary to attain housing (e.g., security deposit and first and last month’s rent), and assistance to avoid eviction and meet other emergency housing needs during the 12-month period.
- The government will provide immigration legal services through introductory assistance and tailored legal access services to class members and their families; and programs to place cases with counsel free of charge. These services will be available during the full six-year term of the settlement.
Jordan and McClintock added:
As if the Department’s stipulation is not egregious enough, the settlement also allows an illegal alien to escape criminal prosecution for illegally crossing the border solely because the alien is traveling with a child. Because that legally dubious prohibition in the settlement lasts for eight years, it prevents future administrations from taking definitive steps to control the border. Such a provision also ensures that cartels can exploit yet another dangerous loophole to continue their criminal smuggling and trafficking enterprises. In fact, knowing the Biden Administration refuses to detain family units, cartels already separate minors from their parents and have cartel members pose as the minors’ relatives to ensure quick entry into the United States. The settlement will no doubt have a similar effect, with both children and the American people left to suffer because of the perverse incentives of President Biden’s failed border policies.
In April 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the “new ‘zero-tolerance policy’ for offenses under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a), which prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien.”
Sessions said: “To those who wish to challenge the Trump Administration’s commitment to public safety, national security, and the rule of law, I warn you: illegally entering this country will not be rewarded, but will instead be met with the full prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice.”
However, a few months later, Trump signed an executive order ending the policy.
But the policy never went away.
President Joe Biden officially rescinded the policy in 2021.
The settlement between the ACLU and DOJ comes from the class action litigation Ms. L., et al. v. ICE, et al.
“Mrs. L” filed a complaint alleging the government “unlawfully separated” her from her child.
The ACLU then amended the complaint to include “parents or legal guardians and their children who were separated at the border between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021.”
The ACLU claimed, “that the separation of putative class member parents from their children violated procedural and substantive due process, as well as the asylum statute.”
Jordan and McClintock want Garland to give them a handful of documents. Those documents include anything related to the decisions that led to the “grab bag” of services, how they got the total costs in those goodies, and the legal basis to limit future criminal charges against illegal aliens.
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Comments
I think the purpose of unchecked migration northward is twofold..create a new voting base along with undefineable government jobs.
Behavioral health?
More the jobs. The illegals mostly can’t vote, but those taking care of them here, do vote, and do so heavily and reliably for Democrats, who are their meal ticket.
Even without being able to vote illegal aliens skew election results. For example because illegal aliens are counted in the census for a state’s population California, which is deep blue, receives an extra 6-10 representatives in the House ( and thus a concurrent 6-10 electoral votes). Now imagine how control of the House and presidential elections are affected by that even if none of those illegal aliens vote.
That only works if they settle in districts where the existing population votes D. If they choose instead to go where the jobs are, which is in R states and districts, then the advantage of their extra representation goes to the R voters in those places.
Or they settle in agricultural districts in California where they work the fields. Furthermore as I pointed out California is deep blue and the legislature sets the districts and the Democrats gerrymander those districts. Finally don’t forget that the electors are decided by the number of Representatives in the House and having an extra 6-10 electors which is basically like giving the Democrats an extra state for presidential elections.
If they settle in the agricultural districts, where the eligible voters vote Republican, then those voters get the benefit. There’s a limit to how much the legislature can gerrymander this benefit away from them.
You’re correct about the impact in the electoral college, so long as CA voters as a whole continue to vote Dem.
Voting is likely a big part of it. Immigrants granted asylum are actually put on on a fast tract for naturalization, and then they’ll be voting.
The vast majority of asylum applicants are rejected, when they eventually come up for a hearing. The trick is that their hearings are set for years from now, and there’s every chance that even then they won’t show up. None of that helps them vote.
Funny. They vote anyway. Ask me how I know.
I’m convinced that the only reason that makes any real sense for the open borders is the treacherous, traitorous democrat lust for many 10s of millions of new future democrat voters no matter the high costs to citizens in money & in overwhelmed hospitals & schools. Political power at any cost.
That only makes sense if they will eventually become citizens and vote. So far that doesn’t seem to be the case. At best it will take longer than party strategists’ horizon.
These days with Motor Voter and the other corruption (or nonfeasance) in voter registration, the mere fact that they are not citizens doesn’t mean they won’t vote. So much automatic registration and refusal to purge lists leaves large loopholes.
Motor voter doesn’t include aliens. And the process for issuing illegal immigrants with drivers’ licenses doesn’t include voter registration.
Automatic registration and dirty voter lists are a gilt-edged calligraphic invitation for fraud, but not at the hands of the illegal immigrants. The fraud is carried out by trusted Dem party operatives.
“Motor voter doesn’t include aliens.”
Many election auditors, election officials, and even the aliens themselves have testified otherwise, for decades.
Again – you’re living in a paint-by-numbers unreality. They vote in mighty numbers, by mail.
Hopefully the end of Chevron which is a real possibility this term at SCOTUS will provide enough room to rollback these settlements. How exactly does the Executive have discretion to propose or accept a settlement which places limits upon a particular agency? That is a Congressional Power not an Executive power. Now if these proposed settlements had been placed before Congress in an up/down individual vote then sure though the current Congress can’t bind a future Congress short of a Constitutional amendment. Even then a future Congress can work to repeal it.
Illegal aliens used to be permitted to keep their family unit together when detained (unlike just about anybody else who is arrested) until a well-meaning judge decided that having the kids in lockup with the parents was cruel and ordered them separated upon detention. The leftists, of course, blamed Trump.
By “migrants”, do we mean “illegal aliens”?
I played by their phony rules and called them “migrants” out of spite. Lawbreaking idiots enslaving themselves is what I see
The two terms are not contradictory. People who come here with the intent of staying are migrants, and to be more specific they are immigrants. If they do so illegally they are illegal immigrants, just as people who drive illegally are illegal drivers, and people who sell drugs illegally are illegal pharmacists.
Except that we don’t call them illegal pharmacists or illegal drivers, we call them criminals. The use of the word migrant or immigrant is to explicitly sanitize their criminal behavior.
Actually we do call people who drive illegally illegal drivers.
People who sell legal drugs illegally are not really a thing, but if they were we would almost certainly call them illegal pharmacists.
The same method was used to bypass Georgia law regarding elections in 2020. These “settlements” between parties who are not adversarial and that change law, should be ended.
Even if adversarial, changing law through settlement agreements is egregious. As a lawyer, I wonder why I have never seen anything written about how these type of fake “settlements” can be ended.
They basically can’t be. But they should. If I were a mayor, county executive, governor, or president, I would find some ancient consent order and inform the court that approved it that the city/county/state/country no longer consents to the order, and will no longer obey it, and then sit back and let the waste hit the air movement device.
Uh…..what? Why waste anymore time with these clowns? If you don’t want this waste of taxpayer resources, don’t fund it.
I wonder how much of this is being done to block Trump from being able to take effective action should he win in 2024. It would likely take half his administration to undo the settlement at least.
Trump will be sleeping in Piscatorial Playa by this time next year.
With the polling trending the way it is 1968 will be lame.