US expands ‘catch and release’ practice amid migrant surge at Mexico border

Associated Press
Wed 3 Apr 2019 19.48 BST Last modified on Wed 3 Apr 2019 20.04 BST

The latest surge of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border has pushed the Trump administration dramatically to expand a practice Donald Trump has long mocked as “catch and release”.

With many immigration processing-and-holding centers overwhelmed, the administration is putting families on to buses and taking them hundreds of miles away, disgorging them at Greyhound stations and churches in cities such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, San Antonio, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona, because towns close to the border already have more than they can handle.

Relief organizations in some cities are struggling to feed and house the migrants and are warning that a public health crisis is taking shape.

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Trump has railed against the practice, tweeting in November that it was over: “Catch and Release is an obsolete term. It is now Catch and Detain. Illegal Immigrants trying to come into the U.S.A., often proudly flying the flag of their nation as they ask for U.S. Asylum, will be detained or turned away,” he tweeted.

But in recent months, the number of families crossing into the US has climbed dramatically, pushing the system to a situation a federal agency chief last week called the “breaking point”.

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