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For Immediate Release
July, 01 2020, 12:00am EDT
Contact:
US Supreme Court Ruling that Children of Asylum-Seekers Must be Released from Detention Lacks Necessary Provisions for Parents; Risks Further Family Separation
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds today to a federal judge's ruling that children of asylum-seekers in detention centers must be released by July 17, 2020 due to the outbreak of coronavirus in these facilities, but leaves the door open for the Administration to effectively separate families by releasing children to sponsors or transfer them to state custody while parents remain detained or are deported.
New York
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds today to a federal judge's ruling that children of asylum-seekers in detention centers must be released by July 17, 2020 due to the outbreak of coronavirus in these facilities, but leaves the door open for the Administration to effectively separate families by releasing children to sponsors or transfer them to state custody while parents remain detained or are deported.
This decision also leaves out potentially thousands of adult asylum-seekers and other immigrant groups at the mercy of the detention system to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 among detainees. 72 percent of individuals in detention centers are expected to be infected by day 90 under an optimistic scenario, according to recent modeling.
Olga Bryne, the Director of U.S. Immigration at the IRC said:
"While this decision will provide relief for the children of asylum-seekers, who were needlessly detained across 3 detention centers, it leaves it to the Trump Administration to decide whether the children will leave with their families or else be separated from them. The parents of the children, as well as asylum-seekers and immigrants, are at risk of continued or indefinite detention until their cases are heard. We urge that children and their parents are released together, and with urgency. The U.S. Government must not use this decision as a means to separate families.
"The policy to lock up people for seeking safe haven from danger was cruel at the point of ideation, but to keep them locked in during the most infectious pandemic in 100 years, is inhumane. As the U.S. deals with a new spike of COVID-19 cases breaking a record for daily cases, the risk to public health is exacerbated for those waiting out their cases in detention centers."
The IRC continues to provide emergency humanitarian programming to asylum-seekers on both sides of the U.S. southern border. In Phoenix, the IRC provides comprehensive assistance to asylum-seekers released from U.S. government detention through a collaborative shelter operation in Phoenix providing warm meals, clothing, transitional shelter, travel coordination to more than 8,000 asylum-seekers since June 2018. In California and Texas, we are working alongside partners to respond to asylum seekers' urgent needs.
To protect the health and safety of all, the Department of Homeland Security should take immediate steps to maximize the use of humanitarian parole, release on recognizance, and community-based alternatives to detention, following medical screening and in a manner consistent with public health protocols. Public health experts universally agree that social distancing is one of the most important measures we can all take to combat the spread of COVID-19, something that is impossible in detention facilities.
The International Rescue Committee responds to the world's worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their future.
LATEST NEWS
Oxfam Warns Trump Foreign Aid Cuts Could Help Kill More Than 9 Million People by 2030
"Governments must restore their aid budgets, and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades," said an advocate with the international charity Oxfam.
Apr 10, 2026
The global anti-poverty group Oxfam International warned this week that US President Donald Trump’s decision to slash foreign aid by more than half could kill nearly 10 million people by the end of the decade.
Responding to new data released Thursday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showing the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance, Oxfam said “wealthy governments are turning their backs on the lives of millions of women, men, and children in the Global South.”
The OECD released preliminary data on international aid that was provided last year by member countries of the organization's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), finding the largest annual drop in the history of official development assistance.
OECD member countries provided $174.3 billion in aid last year, according to the new data, representing 0.26% of the countries' combined gross national income.
In 2024, the countries sent $215.1 billion, or 0.34% of their gross national income to developing countries, including across the Global South—helping to provide nutritional assistance and healthcare initiatives among other programs.
US foreign aid spending dropped by 56.9% after Trump dismantled the US Agency for International Development, cut smaller aid programs, and pushed Congress to rescind previously approved foreign assistance.
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization."
Overall, wealthy OECD countries provided 23.1% less in foreign aid last year than they did in 2024—a greater decline than what the Institute of Global Health in Barcelona projected in February when it released a study in The Lancet, evaluating the impact of development assistance funding declines around the world.
The institute found that aid cuts in 2025 alone, which it assumed would represent a 21% decrease in funding, would lead to 695,238 excess deaths. If cuts continued at the same rate, an estimated 9,416,417 people could die of preventable diseases like malaria and AIDS, starvation, and other impacts by 2030.
The drop in foreign aid spending would suggest even more people could be killed by the cuts over the next four years.
“We are in a time of increasing humanitarian needs; strong pressures on the poorest and most fragile countries; and facing growing global uncertainties and massive insecurity," said Carsten Staur, chair of the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC), which compiled the data. "In this situation, the world needs more ODA, not less—to help fight extreme poverty, improve resilience, and mobilize more private resources."
Trump's cuts helped make Germany the largest provider of development assistance for the first time ever, providing $29.1 billion to countries in need. The US sent $29 billion while the United Kingdom provided $17.2 billion, Japan sent $16.2 billion, and France sent $14.5 billion. All five of the top ODA providers reduced their foreign aid spending, accounting for 95.7% of the total decline.
Eight out of the DAC's 34 member countries either maintained or increased their development aid spending, and four countries—Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, and Sweden—exceeded the United Nations' target of spending 0.7% of their gross national income on ODA.
Didier Jacobs, development finance lead for Oxfam, emphasized that while "recklessly" cutting foreign aid, "the Trump administration has been preparing to ask Congress for tens of billions in additional funding for bombs, ammunition, and other military equipment relating to its unlawful war against Iran."
"At a time when aid cuts are already driving instability and fostering greater inequality, government donors are cutting life-saving aid budgets while financing conflict and militarization. Cuts from donors including Germany, France and the UK will be felt by the world’s poorest," said Jacobs.
In addition to slashing military spending instead of crucial foreign aid, he said, "there are other ways to find tens of billions, such as by taxing the $2.84 trillions of dollars that the super-rich hide in tax havens.”
"Governments must restore their aid budgets," he said, "and shore up the global humanitarian system that faces its most serious crisis in decades."
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Treasury Adviser Admits Agency Didn’t Prepare for Economic Fallout of Trump’s Iran War
"It is unacceptable that Treasury may not have performed the most basic planning before it was launched," said US Sen. Ron Wyden.
Apr 10, 2026
The top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee revealed Thursday that an adviser to the US Treasury Department admitted he was unaware of the agency doing any work to prepare for the economic fallout of President Donald Trump's war on Iran, which has plunged the global economy into chaos and cost American drivers billions at the pump.
Sriprakash Kothari, a top adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trump's nominee to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, told US Sen. Ron Wyden's (D-Ore.) staff behind closed doors that "not only did he not perform any work related to energy markets leading up to the war, but that he wasn’t aware of anyone at Treasury who did," Wyden wrote in a letter to Bessent.
Wyden quotes Kothari as saying he did no work to prepare for economic impacts of the war "leading up to the conflict," just "subsequent" to its start on February 28.
"When later asked to clarify this response, he reiterated that he had not performed any analysis or work related to energy markets, or any other economic facet, in the lead-up to military action in Iran," Wyden added. "He further told staff that the work he performed subsequently occurred after learning about the February 2026 strikes in the news. Mr. Kothari was then asked whether he was aware of anyone at Treasury performing analysis or work related to energy markets in the lead-up to potential military action in Iran, he responded that he was not aware of anyone performing any such work."
Wyden wrote that given the "rapidly growing affordability crisis" in the US—a crisis intensified by Trump's war on Iran—"it is unacceptable that Treasury may not have performed the most basic planning before it was launched."
"Every problem resulting from the conflict which we are seeing now," wrote Wyden, "was not only foreseeable but was predicted by the intelligence agencies, which reported as recently as last March that Iran was 'capable of inflicting severe damage to an attacker' and of 'disrupting shipping, particularly energy supplies, through the Strait of Hormuz.'"
In just six weeks, Trump's Iran war has cost American taxpayers over $30 billion and counting, and US drivers collectively spent over $8 billion more on gas during the first month of the illegal assault, which sent oil prices surging.
CNN reported last month that the Trump administration "significantly underestimated Iran’s willingness to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to US military strikes while planning the ongoing operation."
"While key officials from the Departments of Energy and Treasury were present for some of the official planning meetings about the operation before it started," CNN reported, citing unnamed sources familiar with the discussions, "the agency analysis and forecasts that would be integral elements of the decision-making process in past administrations were secondary considerations."
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As Mexico Enacts Universal Healthcare, Advocate Says Insurers' 'Stranglehold' Is Moving US in 'Opposite Direction'
Medicare for All advocate Wendell Potter said it's "both inspiring and frustrating" to see other nations advance their public healthcare systems while the US dismantles its own.
Apr 10, 2026
As Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum moves forward with a plan to enact universal healthcare for her country’s more than 130 million people, a longtime advocate for Medicare for All in the US called the development “both inspiring and frustrating.”
"Inspiring because it shows what is possible," Wendell Potter, a former insurance company communications director who has become a leading critic of the industry, told Common Dreams. "Frustrating because here in the US we are going in the opposite direction."
Earlier this week, Sheinbaum announced a decree that she called "a historic step" for Mexico.
Beginning in 2027, her government plans to unify Mexico's public health institutions into a single Universal Health Service, allowing patients across the country to receive care from the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the Social Security Institute and Social Services of Workers of the State (ISSSTE), and the IMSS‑Bienestar program, which provides free services to those without employer-provided insurance.
According to TeleSur, universal access would be rolled out gradually, with universal emergency care and continuity of treatment, free of financial constraints, beginning in January. Specialized services such as radiotherapy, laboratory tests, and imaging studies would be phased in later that year, and universal prescription fulfillment and hospitalization would also be added to the program in 2028.
"The goal is that when we leave the government [in 2030], any Mexican man or woman can go to any health institution for treatment for any ailment and be received," Sheinbaum said.
Mexico has expanded its annual healthcare budget in recent years, but Sheinbaum's government hopes that consolidating all of Mexico's health services into a single program will eliminate bureaucratic bloat and create a more cost-effective system that saves money over time.
Potter described the plan as “just another example of countries around the world lapping the US when it comes to healthcare policy.”
While tens of millions more previously uninsured Mexicans have become eligible for free care under the healthcare expansion efforts of Sheinbaum and her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the US under President Donald Trump is in the process of shredding public healthcare programs and subsidies.
Following the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by Trump last year, 11.8 million Americans are expected to lose Medicaid and other coverage, and more than 20 million are projected to see higher premiums after insurance subsidies under the Affordable Care Act were allowed to expire.
"Due to the stranglehold Big Insurance has on too many politicians in this country, instead of expanding care and lowering costs, we are simply helping Big Insurance make more and more money," Potter said. "It is totally backwards."
"We must continue to keep Medicare for All as our north star here. But also acknowledge the reality that we need to change so much about our current political environment to make it possible," he said. "And that has to start with breaking up Big Insurance's stranglehold on Washington."
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