Us-Mexico Border: Privacy Activists and American Migrants

us-mexico border: Migrant children part of the Central American migrants - mostly from Honduras - moving towards the United States, play with Mexico's Federal police at El Chaparral port of entry on the US-Mexico border in Tijuana, Baja California state, Mexico, according to Toronto Star. HHS and DHS are using information on U.S.-based relatives and other potential sponsors obtained from detained children to arrest and deport those families. In a Wednesday letter to the heads of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security, 112 civil-liberties and immigrant-rights groups, child-welfare advocates and privacy activists are crying foul, demanding an immediate halt to what they call an illegal practice. GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP/GETTY IMAGES HHS and DHS are using information on U.S.-based relatives and other potential sponsors obtained from detained children to arrest and deport those families, the authors complain. The new role for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an HHS unit that works to reunite unaccompanied migrant children with relatives until their legal status can be resolved, began under an information-sharing agreement it quietly signed in April with immigration enforcement agencies in DHS. Fingerprints and personal data from would-be sponsors and members of their households were then fed into a DHS database originally intended to track criminal histories but revamped in May to aid immigration verification, government documents show. Already, they write, families have become too scared to step forward to sponsor children. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.