Julia Preston. NYT. June 17, 2014.
McALLEN, Tex. — Exhausted and dazed, hundreds
of Central American migrants, mainly women with small children, come to the bus
station of this border city every day now, spilling into a church next door
that has opened its doors. Having crossed into the United States illegally, the
new arrivals are often grimy and famished. In the church, they eat, bathe and
sleep, changing into donated shoes and clothes.
With no immigration detention site equipped
for women with children in the area — the closest one, in Pennsylvania, is
overbooked — they are freed by the Border Patrol with a bus ticket to travel to
where they have relatives in this country, and an order to appear in
immigration court in 30 days.
They are among at least 30,000 migrants
released this year, border officials and federal lawmakers said, amid a surge
of illegal crossings in the Rio Grande Valley.
While most men are held and processed quickly
for deportation, border authorities struggling to manage the influx have been
releasing pregnant women and parents with young children, allowing them to join
family members living here and issuing them a deportation hearing notice.
Migrants have sent word back home they received a “permit” to remain at least
temporarily in the United States, feeding rumors along migrant routes and
spurring others to embark on the long journey.
Read the complete piece.
Ed. Note.
The current crisis reveals the failure of our current immigration policy and the failure of the Republican dominated Congress to reform that policy.
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