Last week, the world was outraged by the US stealing the children of refugees and sticking them in cages. The Trump administration's response was to offer to stick families in desert concentration camps instead. But now they have a new horror: using family separation as leverage to coerce "voluntary" deportation:
Detained Central American migrants who have been separated from their children have been told they can reunite with them if they agree to voluntarily deportations, The Texas Tribune reported Sunday.
The news outlet, citing a detained Honduran man and two immigration lawyers, reported that the migrants have been told they would be reunited with their children at an airport if they agree to sign off on deportations.
The Honduran man, who was not identified, said he gave up his asylum case and signed the paperwork in an effort to reunite with his 6-year-old daughter. He said he’s now trying to rescind his agreement and fight his case in court.
In other words, they're using children as hostages. Of course, its illegal, under both US and international law (the detention may be legal; the threat to continue to detain another person to coerce behaviour is the crime here). Which is perhaps why Trump is so keen to have "no judges or court cases" over border decisions: because they would enforce the law, rather than allowing ICE to violate it with impunity.
