Heartland Alliance’s National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) is outraged by reported plans for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct raids on Central American mothers and children who have fled violence in their home countries and seek safety in the U.S.  Without legal representation or information about navigating the complex immigration system, many families do not understand their obligations to appear before a U.S. immigration judge.

With Honduras rated the world’s murder capital, and El Salvador and Guatemala ranked as 1st and 3rd for highest murder rates of women according to the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, any plans to deport these families must be done with extreme caution and only if due process protections have been fully exhausted. Since the influx of mothers with young children began in the spring of 2014, approximately 90% of those subjected to expedited removal have a credible fear of persecution, a critical first step in an asylum hearing.

“After a federal court prevented the Department of Homeland Security from using family detention to deter others from fleeing violence in their home countries, ICE now pursues desperate and inhumane measures,” said NIJC Executive Director Mary Meg McCarthy.  “Deporting families as a deterrent is a failed plan from the start because it puts lives at risk and does not address fundamental flaws of our nation’s broken immigration system and the extreme violence in Central America,” she said. “First and foremost, we need to protect those seeking asylum and ensure that people with a well-founded fear of persecution in their home countries will not be returned to potential harm—or death.”