U.S. Agencies Split Over Fingerprinting Parents of Child Immigrants

Recent news talks about the proposal of U.S. immigration enforcement officers that fingerprints be taken from all people who claims custody of children who have entered the United States illegally without an adult relative. This is a measure that opponents said could perhaps keep thousands of families apart.

As per Yahoo, a new wave of unaccompanied Central American children has spilled across the U.S,-Mexico border, resulting to the proposal underscoring the somewhat conflicting goals of federal agencies to deal with undocumented immigrants. Said issues affect the presidential campaign trails of many.

According to Reuters, the officials situated at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, otherwise known as the HHS, said that they have no plans to change the fingerprint policy. The said department is held fully responsible for finding housing for migrant children. They claimed that the said proposal, which was made by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the ICE would completely delay family reunions and infringe upon the parent-child relationship.

It was noted by New York Times, Bobby Gregg, Deputy Director for Children's Services at HHS's office of refugee resettlement, was quoted on his statement, saying, "One of our goals is to place children with an appropriate sponsor as promptly as we can safely do so. And so any delay for placing the child with their parent is time that we're keeping a parent and child separated."

The said memo by ICE officials, which was drafted to respond to Senate hearing last February, proposed expanding fingerprinted, which is limited to non-parents, to actually include parents. ICE further elaborated that it would permit fingerprints to be checked against an FBI database of criminals to verify the identities of people who claim to be the parents while ensuring that children do not end up with parents who have criminal histories.

For the time being, the proposal is preliminary and could still change. It is still uncertain whether it would completely win over the support of the White House.

Tags

Child Immigrants, Department of Homeland Security, U.S.-Mexico Relations, Fingerprint Policies

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