Not nasty enough..

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Parents who have been separated from their children at the US border have reportedly been pressured to volunteer for deportation in exchange for seeing their kids again. A 24-year-old Honduran father who is currently being detained at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Livingston, Texas, told The Texas Tribune on Saturday that he was asked to give up his asylum application and sign a voluntary deportation in order to see his daughter.

Zero tolerance: Parents pressured into deportation in exchange for seeing kids - Business Insider

A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleged Tuesday that U.S. border officials told a Guatemalan migrant woman who crossed the border illegally that they would put her daughter up for adoption if she sought asylum. Edgar Salvidar, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Texas, told The Daily Beast that the woman crossed the border illegally with her 12-year-old daughter earlier this month. The woman’s husband had abused both of them and they were seeking asylum, Salvidar said.

ACLU: Immigrant woman says border agent threatened to put her daughter up for adoption | TheHill

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A federal judge ruled that US immigration agents must reunite migrant children who have been separated from their parents.Children younger than 5 years old need to be reunited within 14 days of the order, and children 5 years old and older within 30 days. More than 2,300 migrant children were separated after US President Donald Trump's administration began a "zero tolerance" policy in early May. Earlier on Tuesday a cabinet secretary said the US won't reunite migrant children separated at the border unless their parents get asylum or agree to be deported.

A federal judge ruled that migrant families need to be reunited - Business Insider

Seventeen states sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its now-halted practice of separating migrant families that illegally cross the US-Mexico border. The lawsuit seeks to force the government to reunite the thousands of families it separated. The filing is teeming with heart-wrenching stories about traumatized children, including one of a South American boy who allegedly wanted to jump out a window because he missed his family.

Lawsuit: Migrant boy nearly jumped out window after family separation - Business Insider

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Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin’s ® administration is canceling dental and vision benefits for thousands of people on Medicaid in the state following a judge blocking the state’s Medicaid work requirements. The cancellation of dental and vision coverage for almost 500,000 enrollees in the state’s Medicaid expansion is “an unfortunate consequence of the judge's ruling,” Doug Hogan, a spokesman for the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services, told the Louisville Courier-Journal.

Ky. governor cancels Medicaid dental, vision benefits after losing work requirement ruling | TheHill

Another Nasty Republican showing his spots..

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The family party, right?

U.S. President Donald Trump’s plan to ban spouses of high-skill visa holders from working will likely push 100,000 people out of jobs and negatively affect the visa holders and their employers, according to a new research study..

Trump Spouse-Visa Shift May Hurt Workers, Push 100,000 From Jobs - Bloomberg

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“(My son) is not the same since we were reunited. I thought that, because he is so young he would not be traumatized by this experience, but he does not separate from me. He cries when he does not see me. That behavior is not normal. In El Salvador he would stay with his dad or my sister and not cry. Now he cries for fear of being alone.” — Olivia Caceres was separated from her 1-year-old son in November at a legal point of entry. The boy’s father, who was seeking asylum, remains detained, Caceres said. It took three months for Caceres to get her son back from government custody.

Angelica Rebeca Gonzalez-Garcia was apprehended and separated from her 7-year-old daughter in May. She hasn’t seen her since. She said officers at the border told her she would never see her daughter again, and that she had “‘endangered’ her by bringing her here,” she wrote. “I cannot express the pain and fear I felt at that point,” she wrote. Gonzalez-Garcia said she has spoken by phone to her daughter, who is currently in a shelter and said that she had been hit by a boy, was bruised and had gotten sick there.

‘My son is not the same’: New testimony paints bleak picture of family separation | PBS NewsHour

Read the horror stories..

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They keep getting nastier and nastier..

Earlier this year, Amy, a sex-trafficking survivor who spent 15 years under the control of violent pimps, walked into a small courthouse in Cincinnati, Ohio, with 105 criminal charges on her record. An hour later, she left with all but two of the charges erased. “For so long I’ve just been seen as a prostitute and a criminal,” said Amy. “Even though I managed to get clean and get away from my trafficker, I haven’t been able to get a job and struggled to find someone who would rent me an apartment and just [allow me to] provide for myself. It’s hard to describe the feeling that now I could get a second chance at life.” Under Ohio’s safe harbour legislation – and similar laws across all states – Amy had the right to request that criminal charges she accrued while she was a victim of human trafficking were expunged from the public record. Yet anti-trafficking advocates across the US are warning that a sudden decision by the Trump administration, effective immediately, to cut all funding for legal representation for survivors like Amy means that many other victims will now struggle to get their expungement cases into a courtroom.

Outcry as Trump restricts funding for sex-trafficking survivors | Global development | The Guardian

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Holiday camp, huh?

Immigrant parents and children alleged in interviews filed in federal court this week that they faced  mistreatment  while being held in U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities, saying they were often deprived of food, water and sleep. In the interviews, which included some redactions and were filed as part of a lawsuit against the government's detention of minors, the immigrants described not being allowed to shower for days and being given rotten food and dirty drinking water. One woman described as Lidia, 22, said during her interview that she and her 4-year-old son “went hungry the entire time” they were detained in McAllen, Texas. “The only food we were given were sandwiches that were frozen and not able to be eaten,” the El-Salvador citizen said.

Detained migrants describe being deprived of food, water and sleep in lawsuit | TheHill

Going slow..

The Trump administration said in a court filing Thursday that it has reunited 364 immigrant children between the ages of 5 and 17 that it identified as being separated from their parents at the border, one week before the deadline to complete the reunifications. The administration said last week that it had identified 2,551 immigrant children who had been separated from their families at the border. Officials said Thursday that they have identified 1,606 of the parents, and have interviewed and cleared 848 of them to be reunited with their children, according to the court filing. Another 272 of the parents still have to be interviewed. More than 200 had been released by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while 264 remain in ICE custody.

364 children reunited with families after being separated at border | TheHill

A 15-month old baby who came to symbolise the US government’s draconian policy of separating migrant families did not recognise his parents when they were reunited in Honduras on Friday, his mother has said. Less than a fifth of children reunited with migrant parents as deadline looms Adalicia Montecinos said her son Johan had “suffered everything that we have been suffering” after spending five months in an Arizona shelter having been separated at the Texas border from his father, who was deported. “I kept saying Johan, Johan, and he started to cry,” Montecinos said. Johan soon warmed to his parents, however, laughing as he received kisses outside a centre where they concluded his final legal paperwork before heading home.

US immigration: baby did not recognise parents after five-month separation | US news | The Guardian

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Let this sink in for a moment..

The Trump administration may have deported more than 450 migrant parents without their children after separating them at the U.S. southern border, according to a new court filing. Administration officials on Monday said 463 parents of separated children aged 5 years and older have potentially been deported without their children. Their files are under review, the government’s status update said, and that number could change.

More than 450 migrant parents may have been deported without their children | TheHill

How Nasty can they get?? And then this:

On June 26, Texas immigration attorney Ruby L. Powers met with 11 separated parents over the course of an intense day at the Port Isabel detention center in South Texas. Among them was a mother from Central America who recounted how her husband drank heavily, grew violent, and sustained multiple affairs. When she went to court against her husband, a judge said putting up with the abuse was part of her duty as a woman. After fleeing the country and seeking asylum at the border, US officials separated her from her 12-year-old child.

Powers wasn’t sure what would happen next. On June 11, Attorney General Jeff Sessions had used his broad authority over the immigration court system to decide that domestic and gang violence will no longer be grounds for asylum in most cases. One month later, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a division of the Department of Homeland Security, told its asylum officers that, “in general,” domestic abuse and gang violence would not even establish the “credible fear” of persecution that allows asylum-seekers to make their case before a judge.

Immigrant advocates warn that the denials will lead to countless asylum-seekers being deported and potentially killed in the countries they fled. “Numbers are one thing,” says Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, “but this is about individual people and individual families being sent back to face grave dangers without even being given a chance to get a lawyer.” 

But the denials have received less attention than the ongoing family reunifications ordered by federal judge Dana Sabraw. “We wanted to see these good stories of parents getting back together with their kids,” García says. “But the real story, for me, was all of the people that keep getting denied after having their credible fear interview.”

Jeff Sessions Has Been Targeting Asylum-Seekers Fleeing Domestic Violence. It’s Been “Devastating.” – Mother Jones

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly set to deport the wife of a former U.S. Marine and Iraq combat veteran early next month. Alejandra Juarez, 38, was notified on Tuesday that she will be deported back to Mexico in nine days, Military Times reported Wednesday. She illegally crossed the southern border into the U.S. in 1998 and married former Marine Sgt. Cuauhtemoc “Temo” Juarez in 2000, the news outlet noted, adding that Temo Juarez served as an infantryman in the Marines from 1995 to 1999 and was deployed to both Africa and South America before later joining the Army National Guard in Orlando, Fla. The family, which includes two daughters, would be split up if Alejandra Juarez’s deportation goes through, as she is planning to take 8-year-old Estela with her back to Mexico, according to Military Times. Pamela, 16, would stay behind in the U.S. with her father. Estela cried while talking to reporters earlier this month.

ICE set to deport wife of former US Marine, Iraq war veteran | TheHill

The party of family values, right?

And then stuff like this happens..

A 6-year-old migrant girl who was separated from her mother under the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" policy was reportedly sexually abused while she was detained in an immigrant detention facility in Arizona.  According to a report published by The Nation on Friday, a young girl was allegedly sexually abused by an older child who also was being held at the Phoenix-area detention facility, Casa Glendale. The girl, identified as D.L., was reportedly advised to sign a form in June saying that she was told to keep her distance from the boy who allegedly abused her.  The Nation obtained and published the document from Southwest Key Program, the center's operator, which said the girl had "presented sexually inappropriate behavior since about a week." The document shows the letter "D" on the signature line next to the words "tender age."

6-year-old girl sexually abused while being held in Arizona detention facility: report | TheHill

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A Yemeni U.S. citizen killed himself in July after his family was denied visas under President Trump's travel ban, according to NBC News. Though Mahmood Salem's three youngest children are U.S. citizens, his wife and oldest two are not and the U.S. government denied them visas under Trump's travel ban, which blocks immigration from seven countries, including Yemen. Salem reportedly called his family, which was residing in Djibouti, on July 18 to say goodbye. 

Yemeni-American man kills himself after family blocked from entering US by Trump admin | TheHill

A lawyer claims that several fathers have been separated from their children by Immigration and Customs Enforcement for a second time, after the fathers refused to withdraw their children’s cases to stay in the US and allow the government to deport the family together. The fathers say that shortly after being reunited with their teenage children, they were presented with forms that gave them three “options” for their families’ cases — with the option for deporting the child along with the parent already selected. One parent says the check mark had been made in pen; two others report that they were told they had to sign the form with that option selected. The allegation comes in a filing late Saturday night in the court case overseeing the federal government’s efforts to reunite families it separated at the US/Mexico border..

Lawsuit: ICE is using separation to coerce parents into letting kids get deported - Vox