The battle of over separating immigrant children from their parents may be over but Minnesota activists and others say the bigger fight over proposed immigration reforms and policies is still on.
President Donald Trump caught some activists and protesters off guard when he reversed himself Wednesday, signing an executive order that halts removing children from their parents who are detained for illegally crossing into the United States.
Margaret McGuirk, a Dominican nun on the pastoral staff at Incarnation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, rejoiced Wednesday when she learned Trump signed the executive order but said the order doesn't erase her concerns over the larger immigration issues facing the country.
"The children were being used as pawns to push Democrats to vote on bills that were detrimental to just immigration reform," said McGuirk, who spent time last year on the U.S./Mexico border helping families seeking asylum.
Although children will no longer be pulled from their parents arms when they cross the border, she and others are incensed that the Trump administration is criminally prosecuting asylum seekers.
"Now they're just going to lock up children with their parents," McGuirk said. Crossing the border is a misdemeanor, not a felony.
She and others worry that these families now will be kept in detention centers longer while their asylum cases are pending. Instead of locking them up, these families' whereabouts could be monitored electronically while refugee organizations care for them, she said.
Now many of these families could remain locked up for months, said John Keller, executive director of the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota.
