Please Act ASAP
HUMANE Act:
Both Senator Cornyn and Representative Cuellar are introducing the HUMANE Act in the Senate and the House. THIS BILL WILL DIRECTLY HARM THE CHILDREN FLEEING FROM CENTRAL AMERICA AND WILL MILITARIZE OUR SOUTHWEST BORDER.
Congress will try to pass this bill ASAP. If enacted, the bill would strip the unaccompanied children from Central America of their due process and make it easier to send them back to the furnace of violence. Additionally, it would fully implement every aspect of the border security bill that the House mandated as the selling feature for immigration reform. We would get the complete militarization of the border that was likely to be enacted with any immigration reform compromise, but millions of undocumented immigrants will still live in the shadows, fearing separation from their families.
The HUMANE Act has significant backing from the GOP and some support from the Blue Dog Dems.
At this moment, we need to act in full force. Please contact your Members of Congress: Representatives and Senators and the President.
Message: Please do not support the Cornyn/Cuellar Humane Act. It will harm the fleeing children and militarize our boarders. We need to get to the root causes of why children are fleeing their countries and address these root causes.Background
Background information:
The Cornyn/Cuellar HUMANE bill is humane in name only, offering accelerated removal proceedings for children and a wholesale expansion of border enforcement that treats a humanitarian crisis as an opportunity to add more bells and whistles to immigration enforcement along the border. The 21 page bill devotes 7 pages to processing the claims of unaccompanied children and 14 pages to further expanding resources and authority of border patrol, the national guard, and local law enforcement to remove children and other border crossers.
The bill amends the TVPRA by forcing children into accelerated immigration court proceedings that must be conducted and completed within ten days of arrival in the United States.
The bill places children who are seeking asylum in the United States into the expedited removal process—and in fact actually mandates a more accelerated process for children than is currently applied to adults. Since the inception of expedited removal under the I996 immigration reform law, unaccompanied children have never been placed in expedited removal precisely because the nature of the process is too truncated to assure that particularly vulnerable individuals are fully able to express their fears or establish their claims.
The bill pretends to extend additional due process to children by allowing them to voluntarily access this special expedited removal process and have any previous order of removal issued after Jan1 , 2013 expunged. In fact, this process is simply a maneuver to pressure children to abandon appeals
The bill requires the Attorney General to create a corps of immigration judges devoted to these specialized children’s removal proceedings, but it does nothing to address the underlying shortages and lack of resources currently plaguing immigration courts. Providing attention to the resources of immigration courts, rather than increasing the resources of ICE and CBP would create a more meaningful, timely and fair system for all persons in immigration court—and would address fundamental concerns about delays in hearing children’s cases in a way that does not limit the due process rights of kids.
The bill mandates custody of children and limits release of children to sponsors—but provides for no additional resources for HHS or other child welfare supports for children.
The bill purports to address humanitarian relief but adds no resources for aiding or assisting border crossers, border communities, or families whose loved ones may be lost in the desert, needs that were recognized even by the border surge amendment package of S. 744.
