Prevalence of Children’s Rights over state migration power

Abstract

The present article is part of project called “Derechos de los niños vs potestad
migratoria en el contexto jurisprudencial colombiano”, funded by Universidad
del Norte. The article presents five sentences issued by the Colombian Constitutional Court, whereby the tribunal assesses several children’s fundamental
rights: the right to have a family and not to be separated from it, as opposed
to the state immigration power regarding the expulsion of parents. Here, the
author explores the construction of a jurisprudential line which defends the
preeminence of the children’s rights to have a family, tending towards the
restriction of the state’s immigration powers. This restriction vanishes, apparently, when the state performs the deportation of an alien parent under the
context of executing a sanction derived from its punishing power.