Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Releases Long-Awaited Review of Use-of-Force Policy
The American Immigration Council reports that CBP has released the Police Executive Research Forum’s 2013 analysis of the agency’s use-of-force policies and practices. According to the report, instigated by inquiries from sixteen Congress members in response to a series of deaths during CBP’s border maintenance practices, appears to have incorporated several recommended policy adjustments, but it is still too early to determine the efficacy of these adjustments.
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President Obama is requesting $3.7 billion in emergency funding from Congress to deal with the humanitarian crisis involving Central American child refugees. The figure is nearly double earlier estimates. According to NBC News, $1.1 billion would go to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, $433 to Customs and Border Protection, $64 to the Department of Justice, $300 million to the Department of State and $1.8 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Some of the funds will cover enforcement measures such as more hours for border patrol agents. Some will cover legal services for children in removal proceedings. Dozens of new immigration judges would be hired. Much would cover care for the unaccompanied children. And $300 million would go toward repatriating the children to their home countries. A portion would cover addressing the underlying conditions that have led to the massive migration, but it is not clear yet what that would involve.
The Administration has also drawn criticism because it has floated the idea of Congress repealing legislation from the Bush Administration that offers additional due process protections for unaccompanied children. And some members of Congress have suggested the President ignore the law and immediately deport unaccompanied children (which, in turn, has led to calls of being hypocritical since those same members criticize the President for seemingly ignoring the law in other respects).
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