NDY Urges USCIS To Reverse Policies That Kill Ill and Disabled Immigrant Children
Last month, U.S. officials took another step against immigrant people by ending adjudication of “deferred action” requests. These requests temporarily prevent the deportation of vulnerable individuals and families who face compelling, and often life-threatening, circumstances. Many applicants for deferred action are children with severe medical conditions like cancer, cystic fibrosis, and epilepsy. These policies also especially target Black and Brown immigrant children.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is an agency of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that administers the country’s naturalization and immigration system. As of August 7, 2019, USCIS is no longer accepting or addressing non-military deferred action requests received at field offices after that date.
As the American Immigration Lawyers Association has explained:
- This change could result in many children’s deportation to countries in which they would lack access to essential medical treatment—treatment that makes the difference between life and death.
- Other vulnerable individuals precluded from deferred action due to this change could face long-term or permanent separation from loved ones, making this measure a de facto family separation policy.
- Indeed, USCIS’s shift in policy could compel families made up of noncitizen parents and sick U.S. citizen children to choose either: (1) family separation; or (2) family unity in countries lacking vital medical care— effectively, a choice between family separation and death.
Under public pressure, USCIS announced that it would re-open denied deferred action requests that were already pending as of August 7, but that is simply not enough to protect many of the lives at risk going forward. The only solution is to fully restore USICS’s deferred action adjudications.
USCIS changed its policy without any advance public notice, endangering terminally ill kids whose lives hang in the balance and other vulnerable individuals who must face the prospect of being separated from loved ones. This is worse than unacceptable – it is nothing short of horrific!
Not Dead Yet is a national disability rights group with sister organizations in Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. We oppose the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia as deadly forms of discrimination against old, ill and disabled people. These USCIS policies show similar contempt for the value of our lives, and must be reversed.
[This Statement was submitted to the House Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties which will hold a hearing entitled “The Administration’s Apparent Revocation of Medical Deferred Action for Critically Ill Children” at 12PM on Wednesday, September 11, 2019.]