ZeroTolerance Lives On
It’s just a routine hearing in a federal court in Texas, but the courtroom is packed. Every bench is filled with defendants, squeezed in and barely able to move. When the judge walks in and they all rise, the benches creak and the chains on their wrists and ankles make a rattling din.
They are migrants who were caught after they crossed the Rio Grande illegally, most of them only a day or two earlier. In this one hearing in the courthouse in McAllen there are 80 defendants.
Judge Juan F. Alanis swears them in and they promise to tell the truth. Then, in an exercise of wholesale justice at lightning speed, each of them is charged with the crime of illegal entry and convicted and sentenced—all before lunchtime.
These mass hearings, often with dozens of defendants, are happening regularly, sometimes twice a day, in federal courts across the southwest border, under the Trump administration’s policy known as zero tolerance.
When the policy first took effect in April, migrant parents were separated from their children. President Trump halted the separations in June after a nationwide outcry, and parents with children no longer are sent to criminal court. But for all other border crossers, zero tolerance remains fully in effect. For the first time, those migrants—including people coming to seek asylum—face criminal prosecution anywhere they cross the border.
More than 30,000 migrants have been convicted through July. President Trump has long claimed that people who cross the border
