美国国家公共电台 NPR 'I'm Crushed': Migrant Parents, Advocates Press For Family Reunification

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The agency guarding the southwest border of the United States says it will suspend President Trump's zero tolerance policy. It will stop referring every person caught crossing the border for criminal prosecution. It was the prosecutions that led to the administration's separation of parents and children. Here's NPR's John Burnett.

JOHN BURNETT, BYLINE: The commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, Kevin McAleenan, said his agents would temporarily halt sending families to court to face criminal charges for illegal entry. He said child separation just hasn't worked.

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KEVIN MCALEENAN: A much better system would be to keep families together through their immigration proceedings. That's what the Obama administration did in 2014. That's what the president has asked Congress to help us do now.

BURNETT: McAleenan was on the border in McAllen, Texas, yesterday talking to reporters.

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MCALEENAN: It's a huge challenge operationally for our agents.

BURNETT: A CBP official speaking on background confirmed that border patrol stations are overcrowded. Kids are waiting in cage-like holding cells while their moms and dads go to court in shackles. What's more, federal agents complain they're spending more time processing immigrants than guarding the border. Meanwhile, another government agency offered a rare look Monday to reporters of how it's caring for unaccompanied immigrant kids. U.S. Health and Human Services gave a tour of a controversial emergency shelter in west Texas, which critics call a tent city. About 330 kids, mostly teenage boys, live in air-conditioned tents, get medical and mental health services, play soccer on AstroTurf and call home. They smiled and gave thumbs up to a group of journalists trundling through their desert encampment outside of El Paso. We were not allowed to record anything or talk to the boys.

On average, the children spend about two months in shelters like this before they're released to go live with a family member. And HHS spokesman Mark Weber, speaking at the sweltering border crossing where the shelter is located, says their main goal is family reunification. But they need to be careful. They have to vet the sponsor to whom they release the children.

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MARK WEBER: There's a lot of safety precautions. We do not want to release a child too soon, too fast because we didn't take the care to ensure that that child is going to be reunited with a parent or an appropriate loved one that the parent has designated.

BURNETT: But two months is a long time to a parent who's had their child forcibly taken away by immigration agents. The family reunification process that seems so well organized during the press tour is a source of deep anguish to parents who spoke to a room packed with journalists in El Paso.

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MARIO: (Speaking Spanish).

BURNETT: One distraught father, who gave his name as Mario from Honduras, told of calling a 1-800 government number to try to speak to his daughter. It rang and rang, he said, with no answer. He had not spoken to his daughter during the month he was in ICE detention.

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MARIO: (Speaking Spanish).

BURNETT: "I'm crushed," he said. "I don't know anything about her. Today, she's 10 years old, and I can't call her and tell her how much I love her."

John Burnett, NPR News, El Paso.

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