A New Texas Law will Separate Families and Criminalize Kids for Seeking Safety Unless the Federal Government Acts Now
By Alexis Bay, Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights
During this time of year, children look forward to spending the holidays with their families. Immigrant children in Texas, however, will now have to worry about being separated from their parents and being arrested under a new state law. Children should never be torn apart from their parents or criminalized, especially not for attempting to seek safety in the United States. Yet that is precisely what the Texas government could do to children and families now that Governor Abbott has signed SB4, an abhorrent law that allows Texas officials to criminally prosecute immigrant children –anywhere from 10 to 17-years-old — for their manner of entry into Texas. The law, which is set to take effect early next year, will endanger children’s safety, their right to seek protection, and family unity, unless the Biden Administration takes immediate action to sue.
Children — and all people — have the right to seek protection anywhere along our border. That is not an opinion — that is a fact under long-standing asylum law. But over this past year, the right to seek asylum has been significantly restricted, with barriers to accessing ports of entry leaving families, children, and adults waiting weeks to months in dangerous, sometimes deadly, conditions along the border. As a result of these restrictions and barriers, many are never able to access a port of entry. Others, including children, feel their only choice is to seek safety between ports of entry, in the hopes they will not be turned away by Border Patrol. In one instance, a Venezuelan child, only 7-years-old, was kidnapped with his mother, drugged, and sexually assaulted while waiting for a chance to seek asylum at a port of entry.
Under Texas law, children between the ages of 10 and 16-years-old can be arrested and criminally charged as juveniles while 17-year-olds are charged as adults. SB4 intentionally does not exclude children, which means that state law enforcement could target them for arrest. Even in instances when a child themselves is not arrested, their parents or other adult family members still could be, leading to children being torn apart from their families and forced to witness and bear the trauma of their parents being arrested and potentially deported. In these situations, children will likely be transferred to federal government custody or thrown into Texas’ problematic child welfare system, which has been marred by a long history of unsafe conditions and abuse. Reunification with their families could take years if it happens at all.
In addition, SB4 could fuel widespread racial profiling of Black and Brown children and families already living in Texas since the new law permits law enforcement officials anywhere in the state to arrest individuals whom they believe entered Texas between ports of entry. Thus, local police, even in Texas towns far away from the border, could act with broad discretion and bias in deciding which individuals, including children and their family members, look like they crossed the border between ports of entry, when deciding who to target and ultimately arrest.
What is even more appalling is that the Texas lawmakers who voted for this law did so knowing full well the devastating risks and consequences for children and families. Several lawmakers opposed to SB4 proposed amendments to the bill that would have prevented children from being criminalized and families from being separated. However, these were all rejected, and the bill was pushed through the legislature as quickly as possible. The rejection of these amendments shows the true intentions behind this law: SB4 seeks to criminalize and punish all immigrants, including children, simply for seeking safety. In this way, SB4 could bear a painful resemblance to the Trump administration’s cruel family separation policy under which the U.S. government criminally prosecuted immigrant parents and as a result, forcibly separated thousands of children from their parents.
There is no overstating how devastating SB4 is for children’s rights and the dangerous precedent this law creates for other states to pass similar legislation targeting even more children if our federal government does not take immediate action to challenge SB4. The Department of Justice must immediately bring legal action to block SB4 and ensure the rights of all children are honored and protected.
