Latest news with #ImmigrationAdvocacy
Yahoo
3 days ago
- General
- Yahoo
‘We're living under uncertainty ': Organizations team up to help TPS holders
Immigration advocacy groups and numerous organizations united Saturday for a rally supporting the Venezuelan community in Orlando. They gathered at the First Baptist Hispano to offer legal advice to those who are or could become undocumented following the latest Supreme Court decision on Temporary Protective Status (known as TPS). 'Many people are feeling afraid and that's understandable because of what's going on across the country,' said Jose Palma, with the National TPS Alliance. 'The hope is that people will understand what's going on with TPS, and how we are organizing to protect TPS and everyone protected by TPS and how we all, working together, can hopefully achieve a way to protect our families.' TPS is offered to those fleeing countries experiencing political instability. The document allows them to work, live and pay taxes in the U.S. 'We need to be fighting,' said William Diaz, founder of Casa de Venezuela, a nonprofit that helps Venezuelan citizens living in the United States.'We have something today, and then one of the courts comes tomorrow with a different decision. It's a constant fight.' The Trump administration is ending TPS for Venezuelans. On May 19th, the Supreme Court permitted the program's end, affecting about 350 Venezuelans currently in the country, with other nationalities to follow. 'About 55,000 Hondurans are living this uncertainty,' said Marduel Hernandez, a TPS holder. 'As of right now, TPS holders from Honduras and Nicaragua, we're living under uncertainty of what's going to be happening.' The assembly follows the Supreme Court's decision to end humanitarian parole for over 500,000 migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti. This temporary protection, similar to TPS, is for those fleeing politically unstable countries. 'It's important to say that all beneficiaries of TPS and parole, they have no criminal record at all. Before they get the authorization to enter the country they go through a background check,' Diaz said. Casa de Venezuela has two more events planned for the weekend in Tampa and Miami. Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
The Guardian
23-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Trump administration seeks to end basic rights and protections for child immigrants in its custody
The Trump administration is trying to end a cornerstone immigration policy that requires the government to provide basic rights and protections to child immigrants in its custody. The protections, which are drawn from a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores Settlement Agreement, limit the amount of time children can be detained by immigration officials. It also requires the government to provide children in its custody with adequate food, water and clean clothes. The administration's move to terminate the Flores agreement was long anticipated. In a court motion filed Thursday, the justice department argued that the Flores agreement should be 'completely' terminated, claiming it has incentivized unauthorized border crossings and 'prevented the federal government from effectively detaining and removing families'. Donald Trump also tried to end these protections during his first term, making very similar arguments. The move to end protections follows a slew of actions by the Trump administration that target children, including restarting the practice of locking up children along with their parents in family detention. Immigration advocacy groups have alleged in a class-action lawsuit filed earlier this month that unaccompanied children are languishing in government facilities after the administration unveiled policies making it exceedingly difficult for family members in the US to take custody of them. The president and lawmakers have also sought to cut off unaccompanied children's access to legal services and make it harder for families in detention to seek legal aid. 'Eviscerating the rudimentary protections that these children have is unconscionable,' said Mishan Wroe, senior attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. 'At this very moment, babies and toddlers are being detained in family detention, and children all over the country are being detained and separated from their families unnecessarily.' The effort to suspend the Flores agreement 'bears the Trump administration's hallmark disregard for the rule of law – and for the wellbeing of toddlers who have done no wrong', said Faisal al-Juburi of the Texas-based legal non-profit Raices. 'This administration would rather enrich private prison contractors with the $45bn earmarked for immigrant detention facilities in the House's depraved spending bill than to uphold basic humanitarian protections for babies.' The Trump administration in 2019 asked a judge to dissolve the Flores Settlement Agreement, but its motion was struck down. During the Biden administration, a federal judge agreed to partially lift oversight protections at the Department of Health and Human Services, but the agreement is still in place at the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies. 'Children who seek refuge in our country should be met with open arms – not imprisonment, deprivation and abuse,' said Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. The settlement is named for Jenny Flores, a 15-year-old girl who fled civil war in El Salvador and was part of a class-action lawsuit alleging widespread mistreatment of children in custody in the 1980s. Since the settlement agreement was reached in 1997, lawyers and advocates have successfully sued the government several times to end the mistreatment of immigrant children. In 2018, attorneys sued after discovering unaccompanied children had been administered psychotropic medication without informed consent. In 2024, a court found that CBP had breached the agreement when it detained children and families at open-air detention sites at the US southern border without adequate access to sanitation, medical care, food, water or blankets. In some cases, children were forced to seek refuge in portable toilets from the searing heat and bitter cold.
