on immigration
Separated immigrant families must forfeit their asylum requests if they want to be reunited, documents show
Immigrant parents who have been separated from their children by the Trump administration must make a choice: Accept deportation to be reunited with their child, or leave the country without them.
New documents show that there is no option for families to be reunited while they wait for their asylum request to be processed. On the form, obtained by NBC News, detained migrant parents must request to "reunite with my child(ren) for the purpose of repatriation to my country of citizenship," or "affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily" request to return without their children, who "will remain in the United States to pursue available claims of relief."
Advocates say this aspect of the zero-tolerance immigration policy may violate international asylum laws, since both options on the form spell out deportation for the adult migrants, rejecting their asylum requests without due process. Some migrants who have already gone through initial asylum screenings are given the form, NBC News reports, meaning their pending asylum cases will be abandoned. Because President Trump signed an executive order ending the separation of migrant families without providing a clear path forward to reunite thousands of children with their parents, migrant parents are now being forced to decide whether to rescind their child's asylum request, too. Read more at NBC News.