WASHINGTON -- The separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border caught the attention of the world and prompted anger, but it is just one of the fronts on which the government is working to curb immigration.
President Donald Trump's administration is seeking to lock up families indefinitely, expand detention space, tighten asylum rules and apply more scrutiny to green-card applications, carving a path around various court rulings to do so.
"The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility," Trump declared days before putting an end to the separation of parents from their children. "Not on my watch."
The administration's attempts to deter Central American families and children from making the trip north are designed to send the message to foreigners -- and Trump's supporters in an election year -- that reaching the United States is going to get harder, and so will getting papers to stay in the country legally.
"All of these things, I think, are part of a bigger ultimate aim, which is to significantly reduce immigration of all kinds to the United States over the longer term, and in the process, the real desire is to change the character of the country," said Doris Meissner, a former commissioner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in President Bill Clinton's administration.
Before departing the White House last week for his European trip, Trump offered his own solution: "Don't come to our country illegally."
But Trump's administration also has ended protected status for hundreds of thousands of people from countries recovering from war and natural disasters, and slashed the number of refugees allowed into the United States.
Applicants for legal residence permits, known as green cards, and other immigration benefits are facing longer waits and more detailed questions. Those who already have green cards can now be deported if they break the rules of federal and state programs that offer public benefits to immigrants, according to guidelines published by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services late last month.
The main public benefits that immigrants with green cards can receive are Medicaid for people with low incomes or disabilities, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Supplemental Security Income and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
Receiving assistance from those programs could even hurt the chances of an immigrant applying for a green card under a proposal by the Department of Homeland Security.
"An alien's receipt of public benefits comes at taxpayer expense, and availability of public benefits may provide an incentive for aliens to immigrate to the United States," the proposal argued.
CHOICE FOR FAMILIES
The White House wants to present families with a choice: Stay together in detention, or release the child to a government program for potential placement with a relative while the parent remains locked up.
That's an attempt to comply with two rulings in California court cases. One requires the government to release children generally after 20 days in detention. The other has banned the separation of families and placed the government under tight deadlines to reunite parents and children.
It's unclear whether the administration has enough beds to hold families in detention, but it's looking. The Homeland Security Department has formally requested 12,000 beds, with 2,000 beds to be made available immediately at U.S. military bases. The Defense Department has said it also received a request to house up to 20,000 unaccompanied children.
Officials are seeking to send people back to their countries sooner and make it harder for them to seek asylum in a backlogged courts system where it can take years to get a ruling. Trump officials say too many people are claiming they are persecuted when they are not, adding that only 20 percent of asylum claims are granted.
[U.S. immigration: Data visualization of selected immigration statistics, U.S. border map]
Acknowledging the California court's imposed deadlines, the Justice Department on Friday filed a plan to reunify more than 2,500 children age 5 and older by July 26 using "truncated" procedures to verify parentage and perform background checks, which exclude DNA testing and other steps it took to reunify children under 5.
Chris Meekins, the deputy assistant Health and Human Services secretary for preparedness and response, filed a declaration that he is fully committed to meet the deadline imposed by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, but that the abbreviated vetting puts children at risk of being placed with "adults who falsely claimed to be their parents or into potentially abusive environments." He added that he did not believe "the placing of children into such situations is consistent with the mission of [the Health and Human Services Department] or my core values."
Sabraw took umbrage at Meekins' statement, disputing that interpretation of his orders to reunify the families.
"It is clear from Mr. Meekins's Declaration that [the Health and Human Services Department] either does not understand the Court's orders or is acting in defiance of them," he wrote late Friday. "At a minimum, it appears he is attempting to provide cover to Defendants for their own conduct in the practice of family separation, and the lack of foresight and infrastructure necessary to remedy the harms caused by that practice."
Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said the declaration gave him second thoughts about whether the Trump administration was acting in good faith to reunify families.
The judge said the administration must provide a list of names of parents in immigration custody and their children by Monday and complete background checks for them by Thursday.
"The task is laborious, but can be accomplished in the time and manner prescribed," he wrote in his order.
'CREATED CRISIS'
A number of immigration experts contend the arrival of Central Americans on the border is not a crisis -- except of the administration's making.
Immigrant advocates said ankle bracelets and community-based programs can be used to ensure people attend court hearings where a judge will determine whether they're allowed to stay in the country or should be deported. They said it's much cheaper and more appropriate since detention isn't meant to be punitive but to ensure court attendance.
Rather, they said resources should be devoted to beefing up the overwhelmed immigration court system to help those genuinely fleeing violence and to weed out those who aren't.
"It is doable, but there is nothing flashy about it. There is nothing sound-bitey about it," said Meissner, the former Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner. "This administration does not seem to be interested in serious answers. It wants to project that there is a crisis. And there is a crisis, which they have created."
In the midst of the controversy, a 6-year-old girl from El Salvador has been reunited with her mother.
Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid and her mother, Cindy Madrid, were separated after U.S. authorities detained them June 13 near Harlingen, Texas.
Audio of the agonized child crying when she was separated -- first published by ProPublica and later by The Associated Press -- galvanized opposition to the separation of families. Alison pleaded with Border Patrol agents to call her aunt, whose phone number she offers from memory.
The joyful reunion occurred early Friday in Houston. It was initially going to happen in Phoenix, where Alison was staying in a government-supported shelter, said family attorney Thelma Garcia. Madrid, 29, was released on bond from an immigration detention center in Port Isabel, Texas, not far from where she was arrested.
"We are beginning to recover the time we lost," Madrid said. "We are very happy to be together as family again."
The mother and daughter plan to live with family members in Houston and the mother will seek asylum, Garcia said.
Madrid said she brought her daughter to the United States in search of a better life.
"I believe she has the capacity to get by here," she said.
Information for this article was contributed by Colleen Long, Amy Taxin, Elliot Spagat, Lolita C. Baldor and staff members of The Associated Press; and by Daniel Shoer Roth of the Miami Herald.
A Section on 07/15/2018