Child Migrants

USCIS Updates CSPA Policy Protecting More Children From Aging Out

In some positive news, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has issued guidance in the USCIS Policy Manual updating when an immigrant visa number “becomes available” for the purpose of calculating a noncitizen’s age in certain situations under the Child Status Protection Act (CSPA). For a child to obtain lawful permanent resident status in the United States based on their parent’s approved petition for a family-sponsored or employment-based visa, the child...

New Trump Executive Order Codifying Family Internment Camps

Donald Trump signed an executive order this morning after weeks of a public relations nightmare following the family separation policy that his Administration put into place recently. Far from a fix, the new executive order actually codifies family internment camps.  How did we get here? In May 2018, Jeff Sessions announced a zero-tolerance policy, whereby everyone entering the United States unlawfully, including persons with bona-fide asylum claims who were...

#WhereAreTheChildren? The Kids Are Alright

We’ve seen a week of mass hysteria, propagated by many well-intentioned people, about how the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) lost around 1,500 migrant kids due to new policy whereby children are separated from their families at the border. Lets get one thing out of the way: This is not true. The so-called “missing children” — unaccompanied minors released from ORR custody — have nothing to do with the...

U.S. To Start Accepting Some Central American Refugees

The Department of State is rolling out a new proposal to allow some Central American youth to claim refugee status. The caveat is that instead of embarking on a dangerous journey to the United States, these young people must attain refugee status within their own respective countries, and must have a qualifying lawfully present relative already present in the United States. Additionally, the number of youth eligible for the...

How You Can Help the Unaccompanied Child Migrants

For over a year now, I have worked with community groups to pressure the President to announce a moratorium on deportations, specifically, an affirmative program ensuring relief from deportation for thousands of immigrant families, along with more significant enforcement reforms to curtail the use of deportation and detention.  While the President now seems poised to deliver some sort of executive amnesty, his handling of the child migrants at the border does...