The federal judge who oversees long-running litigation about the treatment of migrant children in U.S. custody ordered the government Friday to finalize its procedures for providing parents a fateful choice: allow their children to be released to a designated guardian, or remain together in immigration jail.
Such a decision, known informally as “binary choice,” could transform the family migration dynamics that have confounded the Trump administration and the Obama administration before it as successive waves of Central American families crossed the border and overwhelmed U.S. capacity to process their humanitarian claims.
Most important, it would shift the nature of the decision about whether to separate children from their families at the border. Instead of it being up to the government, as it is now, it would be up to the migrant parents. Continue reading.