Possibly headed for court defeat, Trump admin may exclude some migrant kids from vile Miller policy

BuzzFeed News reports that the Trump administration is considering excluding some migrant children from its inhumane, Stephen Miller-led policy using the novel coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to quickly and unlawfully expel asylum-seekers from the U.S. “The draft would amend an unprecedented order issued by the CDC earlier this year that allows border officials to expel immigrants at the southern border instead of housing them at facilities in the US for immigration proceedings,” the report continues.

So considering just some children, but not throwing away the whole godforsaken policy in a lit dumpster where it belongs. If the order BuzzFeed News has obtained does pan out, it’s obvious that it was drafted because of court challenges the policy’s currently facing, one policy expert said. “The Trump administration knows they're going to lose in court,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council tweeted. “So rather than face an embarrassing defeat, they want to moot the lawsuit.”

While a U.S. district judge last week ordered the Trump administration to stop detaining asylum-seeking children and parents at hotels as part of this despicable process quickly kicking them out, Miller’s policy has remained in place. “According to court documents, as of July 31, at least 660 children have been detained in hotels by ICE, and 577 of them were unaccompanied immigrant children,” BuzzFeed News reported at the time.

Presumably under this draft order, which BuzzFeed News reports was authored by Centers for Disease Control (CDC) director Robert Redfield and may already be in place, some children won’t be quickly expelled and may be allowed to remain in the U.S., presumably to pursue their cases. Reichlin-Melnick told BuzzFeed News that the changes don’t just show the administration itself knows it’s wrong on asylum law, but also shows the vile complicity of the CDC’s leadership.

“[O]n closer examination, it’s also notable for the CDC’s endorsement of the White House’s extreme views that public health laws can be used to permit ICE to deny rights to migrant children and rapidly expel them, even when they’ve already tested negative for COVID-19,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

Remember the administration has claimed that allowing asylum-seeking children into the U.S. is a COVID-19 risk. But reporting from Dara Lind and Lomi Kriel in ProPublica last month laid that administration’s false claim to waste: not only is Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) testing nearly all of these children for COVID-19, it’s been expelling them even after they test negative. 

“The Trump administration’s claim that they need to summarily expel children because of COVID was always a pretext,” Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union told ProPublica. “If they are now actually testing and know the children do not have COVID, then the policy is that much more unjustified.”

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