Foreign data sharing agreements expanded during the Trump era are still being used by the Biden Administration to separate families and deny asylum claims with little oversight or remedy for those who are falsely accused. That’s according to a new report by the legal advocacy nonprofit National Immigrant Justice Center.
The report, called “Caught in the Web: The Role of Transnational Data Sharing in the U.S. Immigration System” includes testimony from 34 immigration lawyers across the country who said false information can have life or death consequences for their clients. Many said the problem was compounded by the fact that immigration officials often don’t reveal why asylum seekers are being flagged or how to contest the allegations.
“We’re not seeing the number of family separations that we did under Trump’s zero tolerance,” said Lisa Koop, national director of NIJC’s legal services, “but we’re still seeing separations under Biden. And there’s no reliable system to confront and resolve these separations when they’re happening.”
The Department of Health and Human Services’ latest figures reported 387 children separated from January 2021 through September 2022, compared to more than 1,100 families separated between June 2018 when former President Trump announced the end of zero tolerance and December 2019, near the end of his presidency.
According to DHS, 107 separations under Biden are due to “criminal history” and 26 are due to “cartel/gang affiliation.” Many of them...
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