Camp for immigrant detainees unveiled

DILLEY, Texas – The Obama administration on Monday unveiled a former oil field workers’ camp in rural South Texas that’s being converted into the nation’s largest family immigration detention center, as federal authorities brace for the possibility that mothers and children may again come pouring across the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson visited the 50-acre compound featuring 80 tan, two-bedroom, one-bathroom cottages connected by dirt roads and newly laid grass sod in Dilley, about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio.

The first wave of about 30 immigrants will begin arriving in coming weeks and the cabins will eventually hold up to 480 people. Housing being constructed nearby will push capacity to 2,400 by around May.

Advocates say immigrant families are often fleeing drug or gang violence in Central America and should be released to relatives already in the U.S., rather than being locked up. The daily cost of family detention is about $296 per person, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nearly double the average cost of holding adults as estimated by the National Immigration Forum advocacy group.

Women and children at Dilley will remain until they are deported, released on bond or begin immigration court proceedings that could allow them to stay in the United States. ICE says 70 percent of immigrant families released into the U.S. never showed up for follow-up appointments – part of the reason the agency is adding detention capacity.

Dilley’s cottages include bunk beds and cribs that can sleep up to eight, a flat-screen TV and a kitchen – though cooking is prohibited to prevent fires. The cafeteria is open 12 hours daily and snacks can be had around the clock.

There’s medical care and counselors, trailer classrooms, library and email access and a basketball court and playgrounds – all meant to showcase the softer side of immigration detention. Yet Johnson stressed that despite President Barack Obama’s recently announced executive actions on immigration, anyone who crossed illegally into the U.S. this year remains a priority for deportation.

“This must be clear: Our borders are not open to illegal migration,” he said.

Dilley opens as officials are closing a temporary family immigration detention center that, at its height, held about 700 people on the grounds of a law enforcement training center in Artesia, N.M. It opened in June, at the height of a crush of families at the border, while Dilley begins during a lull.

But Royce Bernstein Murray, director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center, said patterns are seasonal and advocates and federal officials alike expect crossings to increase again in the spring.

Once Dilley is fully operational, federal authorities will be able to house about 3,000 immigrant women and children nationwide.

Collectively that’s still a drop in the bucket because nearly everyone apprehended at the border faces deportation. But Johnson said Central Americans no longer believe lies spread earlier this year by smugglers that anyone making it to the U.S. can stay.

“We know from the interviews conducted with migrants, many of them did not expect to be detained once they cross the border,” Johnson said.

Bernstein Murray countered, “If people are fleeing violence, they don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘I’m going to end up in detention? Then, no, I’m not coming.’”

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Immigrant boom means more housing pressure

Booming immigration will put even more pressure on the housing market, the Treasury says.

In its latest economic update, released on Tuesday, the Treasury forecasts the net migration gain will peak at around 52,000 in the first quarter of next year.

That compares with the current annual rate of about 42,500, which is high by recent standards.

“If the current strength persists it would put additional pressure on the housing market and add further impetus to domestic demand,” the Treasury says.

“However, higher migrant inflows to Canterbury could mitigate some of the capacity risks associated with the rebuild.”

It says the current migration cycle differs from previous ones – there are fewer departures, and the proportion of working-age arrivals is higher.

Finance Minister Bill English, speaking to reporters after the update was released, said more arrivals simply meant that more houses would be needed.

“We have to get more houses on the ground, and councils must understand that if more people turn up, more land is going to be needed.”

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Democrats demand better protections for transgender illegal immigrant children

Dozens of congressional Democrats asked federal health officials Monday to take extra steps to protect gay illegal immigrant children from abuse while they’re in custody, including ensuring that transgender children are housed with the sex they identify as.

Saying reports of mistreatment “continue to emerge” from federal facilities, the lawmakers asked the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement to improve care for the tens of thousands of illegal immigrant children who streamed across the border over the last year, and who are still coming, though in smaller numbers.

“We request ORR to work with providers to ensure that LGBT unaccompanied minors receive affirming and culturally competent care, that placement and housing assignments for transgender youth are consistent with their gender identity, and that appropriate preventative measures and response systems are in place to address incidents of sexual assault as mandated by law,” said the lawmakers, led by Rep. Raul Grijalva, Arizona Democrat.

The Democrats said ORR is delinquent on writing new rules that would apply prison rape standards to the 100 or so facilities the agency has contracted to house illegal immigrant children.

A spokesman for the agency didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday morning.

The lawmakers didn’t list any specific instances of abuse nor give statistics about the rate of illegal immigrant children who identify as other than heterosexual that are being held in federal facilities.

Instead, they pointed to statistics that estimated nearly one in five children in foster care and 15 percent of children in the juvenile justice system are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Those children are twice as likely to be victimized, the Bureau of Justice Statistics said in a 2009 report the lawmakers cited.

It’s unclear whether the illegal immigrant children being held by the federal government are analogous to the U.S. juvenile population.

The Obama administration says that under its interpretation of federal law, illegal immigrant children from countries other than Canada or Mexico caught at the border are to be processed by immigration agents and then turned over the HHS, which is to care for them while they await a judge’s decision on whether to deport them.

Nearly 70,000 children traveling without their parents crossed the border in fiscal year 2014, which ran from Oct. 1, 2013, through Sept. 30, 2014. The peak came in May and June, when 10,000 children a month crossed.

The rate has dropped since then, to slightly more than 2,600 in November, according to the latest statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

Source Article from http://news.yahoo.com/immigrants-family-us-hopes-leave-church-233524726.html
Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church
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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church

DENVER (AP) — The family of a Mexican immigrant living in a Colorado church to avoid deportation hopes he will be home in time for Christmas.

Arturo Hernandez’s wife on Friday said meetings with immigration officials in Washington have given her hope her husband will be able to leave the church. He would qualify for President Obama’s deportation relief if he didn’t have an already-active deportation case.

Ana Sauzameda and her two children were part of a group of religious leaders and families seeking shelter from deportation in churches that flew to Washington this week to lobby for wider leniency from the Obama administration.

The president last month said his administration would permit as many as 4 million immigrants living here illegally with U.S. citizen children to stay in the country and work. But many immigrants who at first blush may qualify will slip through the cracks. Hernandez, from the state of Chihuahua in Mexico, could be one of them because of his four-year-old deportation case.

It stems from an assault charge that Hernandez was acquitted of at trial. But it prevents Hernandez from qualifying for deportation relief that Sauzameda and their oldest daughter both can receive. The couple’s youngest daughter, age 9, is already a U.S. citizen.

The state’s three Democratic congressional representatives have urged the Obama administration to let Hernandez, who fled to the church in October after immigration officials issued a final deportation order, to stay in the country.

On Friday, Sauzameda said she was heartened by the attention that officials in Washington and Denver have given the case and that she remains hopeful.

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Immigrant's family in US hopes he can leave church
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