WASHINGTON _ The Trump administration is pressing Congress to fix what it describes as "loopholes" that allow unaccompanied migrant children coming into the U.S. to "game" the immigration system.
But neither Republican nor Democratic members of Congress have shown interest in addressing the loophole in a law the Senate passed unanimously a decade ago that was aimed at protecting immigrant children.
The "loophole" is in the way the law treats unaccompanied migrant children from South America. Those children are guaranteed a hearing before an immigration judge and allowed to stay with family or in another "least restrictive" setting; unaccompanied migrant children from Mexico or Canada, however, get no such guarantee and can be deported more quickly.
