--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hi, Sean. Hi, Mom. How are you? Good. I'm calling you on Snapchat's video chat feature. Gosh. Aren't you running out of sources to call me? I don't know. This is a deep cut. Most people probably don't even know that Snapchat has a video chat feature.
--:-- Mom: Yes, that's true. Are you just waking up? No, I've been up for a little bit, but I've been reading stuff for a bit.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, what are you reading about? What's happening in the world? What's happening in the world? A lot of shitty stuff.
--:-- Mom: You know what else is happening? What else? Uber's moving forward, listening to feedback so they can improve and get better with every trip.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes. I've been hearing that every day this week. They're building new features to take the stress out of your pickup and working on ways to keep you better protected and connected throughout your ride. Yeah, yeah. You can find out more by going to uber.com slash moving forward.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: We begin today with breaking news and our politics lead under assault from all sides over a policy that separated children from their parents at the border. President Trump did something today that we have never before seen him do as president. He surrendered. If you're weak, which some people would like you to be, if you're really, really pathetically weak, the country's going to be overrun with millions of people. And if you're strong, then you don't have any heart. That's a tough dilemma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Perhaps I'd rather be strong, but that's a tough dilemma. President Trump signed an executive order yesterday. He said it would keep families at the border together, but so far it seems to have just created a lot of confusion. It says that if possible, keep families together, but it does not flat out ban it, and it does not reunite families already separated.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The existing policies put the pressure on the parents to find their kids and try to reunite with them. The parents have a handout with a phone number and they have to try to find their kids.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: As of last night, they were still moving kids around the country. You know, there's these two separate categories of kids. You have unaccompanied alien children who left Central America on their own, made their way all the way through Mexico, crossing the United States, or they are kids who have been temporarily separated from their parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The Daily News reports seven boys in all arrived from the Dallas area. It's unclear whether they were separated from their parents or would they be reunited with relatives here in this area.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: And as of last night, those kids were still being moved. Children were still being moved around the country. And with a heightened awareness now, people are kind of crowdsourcing. Hey, we see a bunch of kids here. We see a bunch of kids there. But what they don't know is whether these are kids who came on their own or kids who were with their parents.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Let's back up and walk through this whole thing step by step. So two months ago, before this executive order, before all the separated families, what was happening when someone came across the border and was picked up by Border Patrol?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: In the past, immigrants would be released into the community and wait for hearings in immigration court instead of holding them in detention. This is catch and release. The idea is there's limited amounts of time and space in the courtrooms. go into the community and show up when you need to show up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that had been the practice. And then two months ago, the president makes the change. What's the change?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: The president made a decision telling federal officials to expeditiously end catch-and-release practices. People who enter the country illegally will be detained until their case is processed.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay. That created a dilemma because you can't detain children for more than 20 days under the Flores decision.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: The opinion of the court number 91905, Reno against Flores, will be announced by Justice Scalia. This goes back to a 1997 settlement agreement called Flores versus Reno that barred the government from detaining children for more than 20 days.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And that's why the administration started separating the children out? Because they had to under this Flores case that said no more than 20 days of detainment for kids?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Yes. That led to hundreds and then thousands of kids being taken from their parents until it reached a crescendo point. And President Trump yesterday signed an executive order that said don't separate kids from their parents, creating another dilemma.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because what we're going to see next is families detained and they can't be detained with their children for more than 20 days under Flores. It's that entire settlement that everybody has been playing along with since 1997.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: And it's that settlement that now the U.S. government is saying, we unsettle. It challenges the Flores settlement, so that means that there's an indefinite, not a 20-day stop to this.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Okay, so the president undoes this 20-day limit, and then he went against that legal precedent, and now he's saying you can keep kids as long as you want, but just keep them with their parents?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Yes. This sounds far from over. It's going to be challenged in the courts. At this point there no order to reunite these kids with their parents The question for today is are they going to continue to separate them or are they going to keep them with their parents
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One thing that is being prepared is housing on military bases so that if they have large numbers of families detained they can house them.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: And just to be clear, this is the president signing an executive order to put a stop to a policy that the president initiated. Yes. It's a reversal from days in which he's been claiming that the decision to keep kids from being taken from their parents was out of his hands.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Because it was never not in his hands. Let's be really clear. The president always had the power to stop this from happening.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Does this executive order actually ban family separation? It does not ban it, but what it does is open the door to families staying together. It says that in general, when possible, if it's doable, keep the families together, which has long been a policy of the United States.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now his executive order that he issued yesterday says when you detain a family, you detain them together.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: What do you what do you think will happen next? The way immigration attorneys see this playing out is that now families that cross the border illegally with their kids are going to be detained until they have their asylum cases if they're requesting asylum or their immigration court cases if they're not requesting asylum status processed and then they will be deported.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And it does, the order does say that should be done in a quick fashion. What does this mean for families who have already been split up or kids who are already being detained?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: My biggest concern this morning is 2,342 children who were taken from their parents, particularly the youngest ones. How are they going to get reunited?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And the messaging from the Trump administration is mixed. The Health and Human Services spokesman Kenneth Wolf said on Wednesday For the minors currently in the Unaccompanied Alien Children program The sponsorship process Will proceed as usual
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Let me explain that Once the children were taken from their parents They were no longer categorized As part of a family Entering the United States Their category changed to unaccompanied alien children As if they had come on their own
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And have you been reporting on the way this policy is affecting babies?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Yes, that has been my most recent focus. When we heard that families were being separated, we were very concerned. And then we began to learn that they have these large, like more than a thousand kids kept in shelters.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And they kept saying, you know, the youngest in the shelter is 10 or this shelter is for 16 and 17 year olds. And so then we said, okay, where are you putting the very little ones? Because we are hearing about very little children being taken from their parents.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: We looked into some of the licensing and we learned that there's at least three shelters in the Rio Grande Valley that are toddler detention centers, basically.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Lawyers and doctors who have been inside of these places say that the facilities themselves and the caregivers themselves are adequate. They look like a daycare. There's toys. There's blankets. There's cribs.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: But the children are shell-shocked, and the caregivers, one doctor said, aren't allowed to pick them up.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The lawyers have described trying to screen a client who is trying to come into the country as an immigrant, and this is a three-year-old. And they can't begin to verbalize either why they need asylum or what their mommy's name is.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: I've also been in touch with the foster care provider for these kids, Bethany Christian. Their youngest is eight months old.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Now, how is that baby going to get reunited with its parents? And how is that baby supposed to make a case for itself?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: So what's going to happen to these shelters and all these sites where these kids are going now? Did anything just change there?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You're right. Nothing just changed there. The shelters with hundreds of very young children and toddlers have not been impacted at this point.
--:-- Martha Mendoza: All of this policy has been carried out very quickly without planning. It's been going on for 60 years. 60 years. Nobody's taken care of it. Nobody's had the political courage to take care of it, but we're going to take care of it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: This executive order is being celebrated by the president as a win, perhaps unsurprisingly. Is it actually a win or is it just the president sort of doing battle with himself and deciding to fake a concession?
--:-- Martha Mendoza: I anticipated this. I was like, President Trump is going to quote unquote fix this by undoing what he has done. So now we're back to where we were two months ago.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It got worse and it got better. The president has throughout this controversy blamed Democrats for obstructionism for past policies
--:-- Martha Mendoza: Is there any truth to that? I don't know who to blame for all of the immigration policies in the United States This is very complicated Democrats and Republicans have been in office well The United States has made a hash out of Central America and Mexico for decades. And so that is what is forcing people to flee.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So I would say all parties are culpable. Everyone's trying to figure out how this will affect what's actually happening on the border right now.
--:-- Ann Chandler: After the break, we ask an immigration lawyer in Texas.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I read a nice article about the CEO of Uber. Oh, really? He's a refugee from Iran, settled down from New York, and his father had to go back to Iran. to look after his dad and they didn't allow him to come back to New York for six years.
--:-- Ann Chandler: So he was separated from his dad for six years.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wow. I had no idea. I guess hiring him is one of the ways that Uber is moving forward because they got these new values and new leadership. Yes, it is. Yes.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, did I tell you about the people behind the political gab fest, by the way? No, you didn't. They practically invented the political podcast. Did you know? No, I didn't.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Oh, the Political Gab Fest dissects everything from the Mueller investigation to the big cases currently facing the Supreme Court to the future of public unions and sexual harassment in Congress.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: The three hosts are veteran journalists, Emily Bazlon with the New York Times Magazine, David Plotz of Atlas Obscura, and John Dickerson of CBS This Morning and The Atlantic.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Wow. You can subscribe to the Political Gab Fest wherever you get your podcasts, Mom, and you'll automatically get new episodes every Thursday. I will do that.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What app, what app will you use? Oh, Apple Podcast.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Today, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department and Border Patrol couldn't agree on exactly how to implement this new policy. But some people have to figure it out right now.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: What we're seeing is a completely chaotic, dysfunctional system. Ann Chandler is an immigration lawyer. I practice out of Texas in the city of Houston, which has a very large, busy immigration court.
--:-- Ann Chandler: I think we've been baffled in trying to understand why is it one family who has a five-year-old girl and a mother who's 26, you know, in the morning is separated, but that same family dynamic who's entering the process in the afternoon are kept together.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It has been, I think, characterized as highly inconsistent is a very accurate portrayal of the reality.
--:-- Ann Chandler: And what about your clients, Anne? What are the parents who have been separated from their kids saying?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I think the parents are hoping that we can help make some sense or provide some answers of when they will be able to hug their child again, when they will be able to reunite with their child, whether, you know, one parent who was in shackles at that moment as they were brought into a criminal proceeding, they asked, you know, when my son goes to court, will he also be in shackles?
--:-- Ann Chandler: And as we, like, talked to these parents, we realized that, in fact, as they enter this system, parents have absolutely no idea in a real-time sense of where their kids are going to be sent to.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're sending children to New York, to Michigan, to Miami, to Washington. And we track these lines and these dots and realize that children are being sent in one direction and parents are being sent in another direction.
--:-- Ann Chandler: So how hard is it to reunite these parents with their kids when they might be thousands of miles away from each other after the government gets through sorting out their business?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I think we're going to learn a lot more about what reunification looks like as the days and the weeks tumble forward.
--:-- Ann Chandler: But what we are seeing right now is there's really not clear policy at all. And for the parents who are not successful on their asylum cases and are being screened out and removed to their home country, they're being deported without their children in the majority of the situations we're tracking.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: For the parents who are in jails, adult detention centers right now, that is what they're asking. Am I going to have a right to reunify with my child if my asylum case is not successful?
--:-- Ann Chandler: And we should demand in these days clarification to this information.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Does it make a difference whether you fleeing gang violence in El Salvador or domestic violence in Mexico do your particular circumstances change how likely you are to be reunited with your kids?
--:-- Ann Chandler: That's a good question. We're seeing an administration that is not following a traditional course of what asylum process looks like.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: They're sharing that their intention is to keep parents, and now under the executive order, I'm kind of reading in parents and children, you know, behind bars. right, as they seek asylum.
--:-- Ann Chandler: And so when individuals are fighting for asylum behind bars, that procedure and the ability to get the witnesses and the facts that you need to present a case is really hampered.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Simultaneously, the Department of Justice, and specifically Jeff Sessions, is trying to unilaterally redraft and rewrite and re-script who should qualify for asylum and who should not.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Many of these mothers and fathers would tell us that, you know, why they came to the United States, their primary motive, was because they realized the incredible danger that their child was in.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Many of these children, they themselves have been violated in ways that I hope as a parent, my child never suffers.
--:-- Ann Chandler: And so when you go through such an arduous journey and a migration and arrive at a country's border and says, help me, and then find like your primary reason for seeking that help, that is to protect your child.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: And now you see that now they've taken my child away from me and I'm not even able to carry out that paternal or that maternal obligation and primary goal of protection.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Consoling a parent as they're mentally going through that pain is quite horrific.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: People die along this border. People get injured trying to cross it. Yeah. It's a desperate situation no matter what, right?
--:-- Ann Chandler: Yeah, yeah. In the courthouses where the parents are shackled and being prosecuted, our country doesn't even have the empathy to allow these parents. many who had been staying in cages four or five or six nights, did not even have the courtesy to give these individuals a bath before they arrived for arraignment and their plea.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One individual we were speaking to, you know, I noticed as I looked down at his pants that he had an incredible amount of blood on his jeans.
--:-- Ann Chandler: And he saw that my attention was diverted to a pants. And then he just said, you know, the journey was difficult, right?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. Yeah. I wonder how this recent development, the zero tolerance policy, the separating kids from their parents fits into what you've seen on the border throughout your time working there.
--:-- Ann Chandler: To me, it feels fundamentally different. You know, the even framing of zero tolerance towards asylum seekers and a population that is fleeing so much strife.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So, yes, it's the framing. And then it is, you know, the new low that our nation is going to, to think that is an okay deterrent measure to take away one's child.
--:-- Ann Chandler: And prosecution and our criminal law should never be a tool of deterrence or of punishment of individuals who come to our country to seek asylum.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Asylum involves arriving at one's border and saying I need help and and that's never been a process that only happens where the government designates one location or another.
--:-- Ann Chandler: I hope that the horrific kind of just reality that we're experiencing this family separation moment will also give us a moment to pause at the other aspects of zero tolerance and even the nature of zero tolerance itself.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yes, our country is a country of laws. And yes, we need to ensure that the border region is safe. But nothing about the zero tolerance policies that I can see move us towards a more safe, humane way.
--:-- Ann Chandler: Anne Chandler runs the Tahirih Justice Center in Houston. I'm Sean Rameswaram. This is Today Explained.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks to Uber for supporting our show. Uber is moving forward, listening to feedback so they can improve and get better with every trip. They're building new features to take the stress out of your pickup and working on ways to keep you better protected and connected throughout your ride. You can find out more by going to uber.com slash moving forward.
