U.S. swaps Venezuelans sent to El Salvador for Americans held by Caracas
In a carefully coordinated series of events following months of negotiations by the State Department, the Venezuelans were bused from the prison to El Salvador's international airport Friday morning and picked up by an aircraft sent from Venezuela. Simultaneously, a U.S.-chartered Gulfstream plane departed a small Georgia airport carrying U.S. diplomatic officials and medical personnel en route to Caracas.
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The administration has been leaning on so-called self-deportations as they double down on President Donald Trump's sweeping mass deportation campaign. Some families, including those from mixed-status households, have opted to leave the country voluntarily, fearful of the administration's immigration crackdown. Unaccompanied children residing in the US are usually afforded special protections given that they are deemed a vulnerable population. They are generally placed with family members already living in the US but are still deemed unaccompanied because they entered the country alone. While existing policy generally allows for the swift removal of children arriving from Mexico and Canada because they're contiguous countries, that's not true for children of other nationalities. And the targeting of those kids from other countries — many of whom are living in the US with family — marks an escalation of the administration's deportation efforts. 'A child is in no position to understand the consequences of self-deporting, particularly without the guidance of an attorney,' said Neha Desai, managing director of Children's Human Rights at the National Center for Youth Law. 'Unaccompanied children are being used as pawns in an effort to deport as many people as possible, regardless of the human toll it takes on the most vulnerable members of our community.' Trump and his top aides have repeatedly cited the influx of children who arrived at the US southern border alone under the Biden administration as a critique of his predecessor and his handling of border security. Trump officials argue that hundreds of thousands of those children went unaccounted for — and are in potentially dangerous situations. Former Biden officials and several experts refute those claims. 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Children from Mexico and Canada have been asked to voluntarily depart as part of the removal process along the US southern border, but that hasn't been true for kids of other nationalities and it's unclear how the directive aligns with the protections outlined in law. 'They are not competent to make their own decisions,' a former Homeland Security official told CNN, referring to young migrant children. 'That's the whole idea — that they're a child. It's the whole premise of TVPRA.' Other policy changes concerning unaccompanied children are also underway. The Office of Refugee Resettlement, a federal agency that falls under HHS, has also implemented new guidelines that the agency describes as part of a broader effort to strengthen vetting of sponsors, who are usually family members of children. The guidelines require that staff meet with them in person before placing the kids, according to an email sent to staff and obtained by CNN. But it also notes that federal law enforcement agencies 'may be present to meet their own mission objectives, which may include interviewing sponsors,' the email states. The potential involvement of federal enforcement agencies could exacerbate the already present chilling effect among immigrant families, many of whom are undocumented and who have children in custody, experts say. 'We are witnessing a fundamental unraveling of protections for this vulnerable population — a population that a bipartisan Congress sought to protect years ago through landmark federal legislation,' Desai said.