For nearly a year, these records have remained under seal, making it nearly impossible to fully grasp how often ICE is denying parole requests.

The Pine Prairie ICE Processing Center in Louisiana. Photo by Patrick Michels/Reveal

This week, we won our legal fight to unseal records that will reveal how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement handled parole requests from detained asylum seekers during the pandemic.

We aimed to unseal monthly status reports that summarize parole determinations made by the New Orleans ICE office, which handles requests from asylum seekers detained in Louisiana and four other states. The reports have been filed with the court as part of a Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuit, Heredia Mons v. Wolf, which challenges ICE’s practice of detaining asylum seekers who qualify for release on parole while they await a decision on their claims.

For nearly a year, these records have remained under seal, making it nearly impossible to fully grasp how often ICE is denying parole requests. It’s so important for us and the general public to know exactly how ICE is handling these requests, especially at a time when the agency should be taking steps to reduce its detained population to curtail the spread of COVID-19. To date, eight detainees ([link removed]) have died from COVID-19 and more than 6,000 have tested positive for the virus since March.

In his Oct. 5 ruling, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the government to release the latest status report, with redactions to any personal identifying information of asylum seekers, by Oct. 13. The previous 11 status reports filed in the case must be unsealed by Nov. 9.

Last month, government attorneys argued against releasing the reports already filed in the case because they claimed it would be burdensome. Our attorney, D. Victoria Baranetsky ([link removed]) , wrote in our response that their argument is “insufficient to thwart the right of access,” and Boasberg ultimately sided with us.

I started following the Heredia Mons case back in April, when I wrote about asylum seekers ([link removed]) held in a Louisiana ICE detention center in the early days of the pandemic. Their parole requests were denied repeatedly. At the New Orleans ICE office alone, only two out of 130 requests were approved in 2018, a statistic that prompted the Southern Poverty Law Center to file suit against the Trump administration last year.

Stayed tuned to find out what we learn in the records. And read the ruling here ([link removed]) .

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A private contractor hired by ICE is holding children hotels before deporting them. Credit: AP Photo/Matt York


** GOVERNMENT CAN’T HOLD CHILDREN IN HOTELS, APPEALS COURT RULES
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An appeals court has upheld a federal judge’s decision ([link removed]) ordering the Trump administration to cease its practice of holding migrant children in hotel rooms before sending them back to their home countries.

The three-judge panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left Judge Dolly Gee’s ruling in place. On Sept. 4, Gee ruled that the government’s practice of detaining children in hotels violated the Flores settlement agreement, which requires that children be placed in facilities licensed in residential child care. The agreement has protected the rights of migrant children for the past 20 years.

In its ruling filed Sunday, the panel said government attorneys failed to explain “why holding minors in hotels, which are open to the public, presents less risk of COVID-19 exposure and spread, both to the minors and to the public, than holding them in licensed facilities.”
The Trump administration’s use of hotel rooms first came to light in July, when the Associated Press learned that children as young as 1 ([link removed]) were being held in hotels in Arizona and Texas under the supervision of adults not trained in child care. Under the Flores agreement, unaccompanied children are supposed to be sent to government shelters and eventually placed in the care of a family member or other suitable sponsor. But the Trump administration circumvented this process through a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order that allows the government to rapidly “expel” people rather than keep them in custody. In the last few months, children have been held in hotels ([link removed]) across San Diego; Phoenix; McAllen, Texas; El Paso, Texas; Miami; Los Angeles; and Seattle.

The appeals judges also ruled that the government had plenty of vacant beds -- 10,000 in all -- within its shelter system for unaccompanied children, and there was no need to house children in hotels.

“Nothing in the present record establishes that the COVID-19 pandemic prevents the government from placing minors in licensed programs,” their ruling states ([link removed]) .

Read more about the ruling here. ([link removed])

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** 3 THINGS WE’RE READING
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1. Vice President Mike Pence ordered the U.S. border closed after CDC scientists said a shutdown wouldn’t slow the spread of the coronavirus. (Associated Press ([link removed]) )

A top CDC doctor spoke out in the early days of the pandemic against the Trump administration’s plan to shut down the border because it would have little effect in slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. But Pence, with the help of White House adviser Stephen Miller, ordered CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield to close the border anyway. “There was a lot of pressure on DHS (the Department of Homeland Security) and CDC to push this forward,” said Olivia Troye, a former top aide to Pence.

The kicker: “The decision to halt asylum processes ‘to protect the public health’ is not based on evidence or science,” wrote Dr. Anthony So, an international public health expert at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a letter to Redfield in April. “This order directly endangers tens of thousands of lives and threatens to amplify dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia.” Since the order went into effect on March 20, nearly 150,000 people – including at least 8,800 unaccompanied children who are normally afforded special legal protections under a court settlement and federal law – have been sent back to their countries of origin without typical due process. Many have been returned to dangerous and violent conditions in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

2. “We need to take away children:” How Jeff Sessions became the “driving force” behind the 2018 policy to separate children from parents at the border. (The New York Times ([link removed]) )

According to an 86-page draft report by the inspector general of the Department of Justice, U.S. attorneys along the border were hesitant to prosecute migrants for illegal entry if it meant they would be separated from their children. But the department’s top leadership at the time – Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein – made it clear that all migrants should be prosecuted, regardless of whether they were parents or not. In all, roughly 2,500 children were separated from their parents in the summer of 2018.

The kicker: The five U.S. attorneys along the border with Mexico, including three appointed by President (Donald) Trump, recoiled in May 2018 against an order to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents. They told top Justice Department officials they were “deeply concerned” about the children’s welfare. But the attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, made it clear what Mr. Trump wanted on a conference call later that afternoon, according to a two-year inquiry by the Justice Department’s inspector general into Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” family separation policy. “We need to take away children,” Mr. Sessions told the prosecutors, according to participants’ notes. One added in shorthand: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”

3. The Trump administration drops its legal fight to prevent migrant youth in U.S. custody from access to abortion care. (BuzzFeed News ([link removed]) )

In October 2017, the ACLU sued the U.S. government after shelter staff prevented a 17-year-old girl in their custody from obtaining an abortion. A U.S. district judge and an appeals court ultimately ruled that the Trump administration can’t block undocumented youth from access to abortions. Now, the government is reversing course.

The kicker: “After three years of battling in court alongside brave young women, we are relieved that the government finally abandoned its attempts to block young people in its custody from accessing abortion,” Brigitte Amiri, deputy director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, said in a statement. "Today’s policy change rights one of the wrongs this administration has committed against immigrants in detention, but their health and safety are still very much at stake."

Bonus: My colleague Patrick Michels wrote extensively about this case a few years ago. He reported on the Trump appointee ([link removed]) who told shelter staff to counsel girls on the risks of abortion, as well as the government’s practice to send girls to counseling centers ([link removed]) recommended by an anti-abortion advocacy group.

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** NEWS BREAK: 2,500 ACRES OF HOME
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In 2016, the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus announced it would no longer use elephants in its performances and instead send them to a 200-acre Florida training facility where they could retire. But a later investigation found they were chained – sometimes 23 hours a day – and “kept in unnaturally small groups when put in pens, moved with bullhooks and electric prods, and lived with chronic injuries from the stress of circus life,” writes Tracey McManus from the Tampa Bay Times. Now, animal welfare organizations have stepped in: The elephants soon will be moving to a new 2,500-acre habitat, where they have plenty of room to roam.

From the Tampa Bay Times ([link removed]) story:

The 2,500-acre elephant habitat within White Oak’s 17,000-acre facility is still under construction, but (Walter Conservation official Michelle) Gadd said the group hopes to begin transferring elephants in early 2021. The habitat will have nine interlinking sections and three barns where the elephants can come and go.

Because of their time in captivity, none of the elephants would survive if returned to the wild, Gadd said. And habitats in their native India and southeast Asia have been decimated. An estimated 30,000 to 50,000 endangered Asian elephants remain in the wild and have access to less than 15 percent of their historic range.

The endangered African elephant, a larger cousin to the Asian elephant, has more population with an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 in the wild, but that is down from about 10 million in 1900.

The habitat at White Oak is intended to resemble the closest thing to the wild any of the elephants have experienced. About 25 workers will provide food and veterinary care. But at White Oak, many of the former Feld (Entertainment) elephants will for the first time in their lives be able to forage for food, swim and roam, and remain in the complex social structures elephants are known for.
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