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During Thursday’s presidential debate, President Trump refused to acknowledge that his current immigration policies put migrant children in cages and blamed it on former President Barack Obama. The Obama administration did create chain-linked enclosures in border facilities in 2014. But Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy forced the separation of thousands of families. The Obama administration only separated families when there was a doubtful relation between adult and child or if the adult had a serious criminal record. The New York Times, Washington Post
Stephen Miller’s Plan to Field Asylum Claims
President Trump announced that if he wins a second term, he will arrange agreements with Central American governments asking them to take asylum claims from individuals seeking refuge in the U.S. Stephen Miller, a key architect of Trump’s anti-immigration policies, claimed Friday that this would help stop “asylum fraud, asylum shopping and asylum abuse on the global scale.” The administration first orchestrated “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” in 2019 that permitted asylum seekers from El Salvador and Honduras to be flown to Guatemala for a chance to seek asylum and removed their chance of applying in the U.S. Critics argue asylum seekers are sent to impoverished countries with small foundations to handle asylum claims. Associated Press
DHS Employees Refuse to Follow ‘Illegal Gag Order’
DHS employees are urging leadership to void a recent directive forcing them to report colleagues they assume are leaking government information, also known as the “illegal gag order.” The national council representing thousands of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS) employees and the Government Accountability Project called on DHS leaders to remove this directive in a Thursday letter, saying it disregards legal protections for government whistleblowers. This letter responded to a message emailed by Deputy Undersecretary for Management Randolph Alles to department employees back on Oct. 13, in which Alles urged employees to “be careful when handling classified, controlled unclassified and draft information.” CBS News
