In the past several weeks, the administration has escalated its efforts to detain, deport, and deter asylum seekers, particularly those from Central America. The administration has used a “zero-tolerance” policy of prosecuting misdemeanor border crossings to justify the separation of thousands of immigrant and refugee children from their parents, though it also separates many families outside of the prosecution context. As resistance to the en masse separation of newly-arrived immigrant families mounted, President Trump issued an Executive Order to expand detention capacity for immigrant families. The Order directs administration officials to swiftly construct new family detention facilities as well as use existing Department of Defense facilities to detain immigrant families, and it seeks reversal of a longstanding court settlement that sets standards for the detention conditions of immigrant children. The Order does not direct administration officials to stop separating immigrant families. In addition, through a rarely-used procedural mechanism, Attorney General Jeff Sessions overturned a precedential case that had offered a clear path to asylum for many survivors of domestic and familial violence. Please join Katie Annand of Kinds in Need of Defense, Bree Bernwanger of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area, and Laura P. Lunn of Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network  as they discuss:

The criminal prosecution of adults who cross the border, including asylum seekers, and the separation of parents and children who arrive together at the border;
Standards set by the Flores Settlement Agreement regarding the detention, release and treatment of children in immigration detention and current efforts by the administration to modify the Settlement;
The devastating shift in family detention policy during the Obama administration, its normalization, the current context of family separation to re-evaluate this system, and its failings as a mechanism to process the claims of bona fide asylum seekers; and
Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision in Matter of A-B- and strategies for approaching asylum claims grounded in domestic violence going forward.
Register now for this important free presentation.