The program is one way the Trump administration is seeking to curtail the arrival of tens of thousands of Central American families each month on the U.S.-Mexico border, many seeking asylum.
Rosita Lopez said armed gang members demanded money from her and her partner at their small grocery store on the Guatemalan coast and threatened to kill them when they couldn't pay. When her partner was shot soon afterward, they sold everything and fled north.
"The families that are all ready to go and desperate, ready with counsel, have survived multiple atrocities can't seem to get before the judge, and others who seem to need time to get their cases together, they're pushing through without due process," said Judy London, directing attorney of the immigrant rights' project at Public Counsel, a pro bono law firm in Los Angeles.
The goal is to"disincentivize families — where an overwhelming majority of cases don't qualify for relief, but instead end with removal orders — from making the treacherous journey to the United States," Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. A recent immigration enforcement operation announced by President Donald Trump aimed to track down and arrest families facing such deportation orders. While agents targeted about 2,100 people, they arrested about three dozen.
In Los Angeles, some immigration judges who used to hear cases of immigrants held in now-shuttered detention facilities are assigned to family cases.
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