For years anti-immigrant pundits and politicians have been denouncing undocumented women they say come here to have “anchor babies”—U.S. citizen children who supposedly will protect them from deportation. For example, during the 2016 campaign Donald Trump claimedthat birthright citizenship was “the biggest magnet for illegal immigration.”
Of course, it’s hard to imagine anything more absurd than the idea that actual women would risk their lives crossing deserts and mountains in order to have children who would have to wait 21 years before applying for legal status for their parents. And as Yale student Viviana Andazola Marquez’s powerful New York Times op-ed reminds us, the immigration authorities can still turn grown children’s applications down and put their parents in deportation proceedings.
Then there’s the case of the 17-year-old undocumented “Jane Doe” being detained in Texas. After arriving here, she learned that she was pregnant. She opted for an abortion, but the immigration authorities tried to deny her access to the procedure—that is, they tried to force her to have a so-called “anchor baby.” Could there be any greater hypocrisy? Maybe. The ACLU sued on the girl’s behalf, and eventually she was allowed to terminate the pregnancy. Now Jeff Sessions’ Justice Department is looking for a way to punish the ACLU’s lawyers for helping the girl.—TPOI editor
[For two other recent examples of immigration officials abusing their powers in order to deny the rights of young women and girls, go hereand here.]
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| Photo: Courtesy Viviana Andazola Marquez |
I Accidentally Turned My Dad In to Immigration Services
By Viviana Andazola Marquez, New York Times
October 24, 2017
This month my father and I drove to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Centennial, Colo., for a routine visit. I offered to drive because my dad was too nervous and excited to take the wheel. “How long have we waited for this day?” he asked me. He had been told to come in for a final interview before he could get approved for legal permanent residency.
But the meeting turned into a nightmare. Several hours after we arrived, I found myself alone, in disbelief. My dad had been detained and was facing deportation proceedings.[...]
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| Photo: Michael S. Williamson /Washington Post via Getty |
The Trump Officials Making Abortion an Issue at the U.S.’s Refugee Office
By Jonathan Blitzer, New Yorker
October 26, 2017The Department of Health and Human Services has a trillion-dollar operating budget, a staff of close to eighty thousand, and more than a hundred programs under its watch, including Medicare, Medicaid, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It also oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a relatively small program tasked with caring for recently arrived refugees. During the past month, O.R.R., in defiance of state and federal court orders, tried to keep a seventeen-year-old girl in its custody from having an abortion. Identified only as “Jane Doe,” she was living in an O.R.R.-funded shelter in Texas, where state law prohibits abortions after twenty weeks. At issue wasn’t the use of federal money (a nonprofit raised the funds necessary for the abortion) or logistics (the girl’s legal guardian had offered to transport her to and from a medical facility). The matter was political.[…]
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Jane Doe Speaks
By Antonia Hylton, VICE
October 25, 2017
A drawn-out court battle between the Trump administration and an undocumented teenager over her right to get an abortion ended Wednesday morning, when the teen received an abortion after weeks of legal wrangling. VICE News Tonight on HBO exclusively interviewed the 17-year-old immigrant, known in court papers as Jane Doe, in Texas last Thursday after she received state-mandated counseling about the procedure.[…]
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Justice Department Accuses A.C.L.U. of Misconduct in Abortion Case
By Adam Liptak, New York Times
November 3, 2017WASHINGTON — In an extraordinary Supreme Court filing on Friday, the Justice Department accused the American Civil Liberties Union of misconduct in the case of an undocumented teenager in government custody known as Jane Doe. The teenager obtained an abortion last month over the government’s objection after an appeals court allowed it.[…]
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