LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Several immigrant advocacy groups are planning to protest the Trump administration's border policies today outside of a downtown federal courthouse building where Attorney General Jeff Sessions is expected to be visiting.
Sessions was in Reno on Monday where he continued to defend the Trump administration's immigration policies at the Mexican border, and he is scheduled to deliver a speech at 12:40 p.m. at the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation's Annual Luncheon Meeting at Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Downtown L.A.
A spokesman for the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights said the organization was told by sources that Sessions will visit the federal courthouse at 312 N. Spring St. at 9 a.m., although the Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles would not confirm if Sessions is planning to visit the courthouse.
After facing significant bipartisan pressure, President Donald Trump last week ended a recent policy of separating children from their parents when they were apprehended at the Mexican border by immigration authorities, although he said the government would still attempt to criminally prosecute the adults while holding the families together, and he did not set out a plan for reuniting some 2,300 children with parents from whom they've been separated. The Department of Justice has since filed a motion to revise the federal Flores settlement agreement, which limits the time immigrant children can be detained to 20 days.
During speech at annual National School Safety Conference in Reno, Sessions said that violent Central American gangs are sending children across the border illegally.
“This is not fair to the children you serve and it's not fair to you,” Sessions said, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. “The compassionate thing to do is protect our children from drugs and violence, put criminals in jail and secure our borders. Having an immigration system that has integrity and consistency is right and just and moral. The alternative is open borders which is dangerous and not a realistic prospect for America.”
CHIRLA and other immigrant groups said they were still unsatisfied after Trump cancelled the separation policy.
“The executive order he issued today is a slap in the face to reason, morality, and human decency,” CHIRLA said on Wednesday. “ In a crisis that he and the Republican party created, today's directive worsens a horrific situation for immigrant families everywhere.”
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