Why can we not immediately deport the children crossing the border?

There are many people who are asking why can we not immediately return the children crossing over the border. Even if they are not from Mexico, why can we not simply put them on an airplane and return them to Guatemala or El Salvador or wherever?

Well, it is because we are a country of laws and there was a law passed in 2008 that adds requirements before a child can be deported. What are the requirements? They are found in a law called the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Action Act. The bill was passed on 10 December 2008 and signed into law by the President on 23 December 2008.

With almost no opposition, Congress passed a new law to protect immigrant children from sex traffickers trying to bring them to the United States. It required judges to hold hearings for youngsters from countries other than neighboring Mexico and Canada, preventing them from possibly getting turned away at the border. …

A desire to crack down on the global child slave trade led to the law named for a 19th Century British abolitionist. President George W. Bush signed it the month before he left the White House.

It ensured that children who came to the United States got a full immigration hearing instead of being turned away or sent back. The goal of the hearing? To determine if the children had a valid claim for asylum.

Here’s the catch: The immigration courts are so backlogged that it can take years for a child’s hearing date to come around. As they wait, most stay with relatives or friends already in the country, attend school and generally go about their lives.

It didn’t take long for word to spread to families in Central America: Send the kids, and they’ll end up in immigration limbo with little threat of deportation — all the while getting a decent education.

Even the best of laws can have unintended side effects. That is why so many laws need some clean-up amendments after they are passed. But, here is where I have a problem. You see, the law was passed during the time of President Bush and was signed into law by President Bush.The law that keeps the children here for a bit is a Republican passed and signed law. It is that law that slowly drifted down to Latin America and gave the hope to all too many Latin American parents that their children might get to stay. That is an inaccurate interpretation, but one that has been believed in Latin America.

So, if the reason they can stay, the reason they cannot be refused entry at the border [read the law] is a Bush-era law, why is it all and only President Obama’s problem? There is no doubt that one can make a case for the idea that his openness to providing a path for citizenship for those children who have been here has helped to encourage people to come. But, the basis for the belief that after arriving children will not be sent away is a President Bush law. It appears to me that the best case that one could make is the both Presidents Bush and Obama, along with Congress, are responsible for the current crisis.

In fact, this would not be the first time a well-meaning law has caused serious unexpected problems years later. Frankly, working for the Federal government, I can guarantee you that much of the paperwork that is found in the Federal government is the result of well-meaning laws that have become Frankenstein paper monsters. So, a well-meaning law to prevent sexual predators from engaging in international trafficking of minors for sexual purposes actually has become the law that permits Latin American parents to send their children here in the faint hope that they will be allowed to stay long enough to either gain an USA education or to be granted citizenship.