A recording of today’s call is available here
On the heels of yet another busy week in immigration, lawyers and policy experts gathered to synthesize this week’s immigration developments, including family separation policies; the matter of a-b; alternatives to detention; and the growing abolish ICE movement.
Jess Morales Rocketto, Political Director, National Domestic Workers Alliance, said, “Family detention is not what we need. I can’t imagine what it would be like for a parent to have to know their family is in jail for months on end. There are alternative options for detentions. The alternatives to family detention actually cost less and are widely used in criminal justice situations. Those alternatives to detention are really what we think is next as far as the government’s response to this crisis.”
Ur Jaddou, Director, America’s Voice: DHS Watch, said, “There are smart, effective and humane alternatives to the morally and operationally unsustainable reliance on zero tolerance and family separation. A combination of root cause mitigation, in-country refugee processing, case management strategies that result in compliance and enhanced resources for the adjudication process would move us towards a safe, legal and orderly process and away from the chaos and cruelty of zero tolerance and family separation.”
David Leopold, Chair of Immigration Law at Ulmer & Berne, former President of the American Lawyers Immigration Association, said, “This is a moment that many of us did not forsee in our worst nightmares. Jeff Sessions, with his extremist, anti-immigrant beliefs, has his hands on the levers and brakes of U.S. immigration law and, in many cases, can make unilateral decisions about what these laws means and how they are to be interpreted. He is using his perch as Attorney General to manipulate the law to cut off hundreds of thousands of people from lawfully applying for asylum as our law permits them to.”
