Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan spoke Wednesday about the Trump administration's move to eliminate time limits on family migration holds, calling the plan a "significant step" in gaining control of the U.S.-Mexico border.
"Through July we saw 475,000 family units, which is more than three times any previous full year, arriving at our border in just 10 months," McAleenan told Fox News' "America's Newsroom."
"They've been coming to exploit the vulnerability in our immigration framework that says if you have a child with you, you can only be held for 20 days."
The rule also establishes "very high standards of care" for children being held in federal custody, while allowing federal officials to keep families through immigration proceedings.
He said the plan is a return to the policy used during President Barack Obama's administration in 2014 and 2015, when the Department of Homeland Security established family residential centers.
"We are going to be holding people in very high-standard facilities, campus-like settings with educational, medical, dining, and separate private living facilities," said McAleenan. "They are not a holding facility, they are nonsecure. What people are allowed to do then is finish immigration proceedings and then, that will have a huge deterrent effect on the flow. That's a very important step."
He acknowledged that the new rule will most likely face a court challenge, but said there is no doubt it will once again work like it did in the past.
"Back in 2014, we had 68,000 families that year," he said. "When the initial decision was made to detain families to the proceedings by the Department of Homeland Security, as soon as those first two flights landed in Central America with people that had gone through a proceeding and were being repatriated, the message went out. The families knew they couldn't just cross the border and be released and the numbers dropped 90% overnight."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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