The US Department of Justice rescinded a memo from the era of former US president Donald Trump that established a “zero tolerance” enforcement policy for migrants crossing the US-Mexico border illegally, resulting in thousands of family separations.
US Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson on Tuesday issued a new memo to federal prosecutors nationwide, saying that the department would return to its longstanding previous policy and instructing prosecutors to act on the merits of individual cases.
“Consistent with this longstanding principle of making individualized assessments in criminal cases, I am rescinding — effective immediately — the policy directive,” Wilkinson wrote.
Photo: Reuters
The “zero tolerance” policy meant that any adult caught crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted for illegal entry. As children cannot be jailed with their family members, families were separated and children were taken into custody by the US Department of Health and Human Services, which manages unaccompanied children at the border.
While the rescinding of “zero tolerance” is in part symbolic, it undoes the Trump administration’s massively unpopular policy responsible for the separation of more than 5,500 children from their parents at the US-Mexico border.
Most families have not been prosecuted under zero tolerance since 2018, when the separations were halted.
Seperately, a US federal judge blocked US President Joe Biden’s administration from implementing a 100-day pause on deportations.
Judge Drew Tipton granted a 14-day temporary restraining order until the case could be further examined, following a request by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
“A near-complete suspension of deportations would only serve to endanger Texans and undermine federal law,” Paxton said in a statement.
On his first day in the White House, Biden signed a moratorium on the deportation of undocumented migrants who arrived in the US before Nov. 1 last year.
Paxton, a close ally of Trump, immediately appealed the order.
US civil rights group, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in turn filed a brief asking the court to deny the request.
“The voters rejected the Trump administration’s disastrous immigration policies, but Texas is now seeking to keep the Biden administration from turning the page,” said Cody Wofsy, an attorney with ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
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