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Judge Sets Deadlines for Trump Administration to Reunite Separated Migrant Children and Parents

"Judge rules that Trump administration has been wrongly detaining asylum seekers"

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By Bloomberg June 27, 2018

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite immigrant children who were separated from their families at U.S. border crossings .. http://fortune.com/2018/06/21/immigrant-children-separated-from-parents-suicide-risk/ , and to refrain from detaining parents without their children.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego said in a ruling late Tuesday there was no dispute that the U.S. government wasn’t prepared to accommodate the consequences of President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy .. http://fortune.com/2018/06/20/family-border-separation-cisco-ceo-chuck-robbins-trump/ .. of prosecuting all adults entering the U.S. illegally from Mexico and separating any children they had with them.

“Measures were not in place to provide for communication between governmental agencies responsible for detaining parents and those responsible for housing children, or to provide for ready communication between separated parents and children,” the judge said. “There was no reunification plan in place, and families have been separated for months.”

His ruling applies to both families crossing into the U.S. illegally between checkpoints, and those who request asylum at border crossings.

Even though Trump, after an outcry, last week signed an executive order .. http://fortune.com/2018/06/21/trump-executive-order-children-separated/ .. that reversed his administration’s policy of separating families seeking entry without a visa, the judge said a court order was needed because the executive order included “subjective” standards for separating minors from their parents and the government has only stated it will reunite children with their families for removal from the country.

Deadlines

The judge gave the government two weeks to return children younger than 5 to their parents and 30 days for children 5 and older. He also ordered the government to provide for communications between the detained adults and their children and not to deport any adult without their children.

“This ruling is an enormous victory for parents and children who thought they may never see each other again,” Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents the immigrants in the case, said in a statement. “Tears will be flowing in detention centers across the country when the families learn they will be reunited.”

Representatives for the Justice Department didn’t immediately return a call for comment outside regular business hours.

The decision is a defeat for Trump, who has vigorously defended the practice as a necessary deterrent and blamed Democrats for allowing undocumented immigrants to “infest” the U.S.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said the family separations were necessary because all illegal border crossings are being prosecuted as crimes under the zero tolerance policy, and children cannot go to jail with their parents.

Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor punishable by as much as six months in prison for the first offense, and a felony punishable by as much as two years for the second offense.

The U.S. said it’s taken about 2,000 minors from their families from April to May. The ACLU has estimated the number may be double that amount.

Judge Sabraw was appointed to the federal bench in 2003 by President George W. Bush.

http://fortune.com/2018/06/27/judge-sets-deadlines-trump-administration-reunite-separated-migrant-children-parents/

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Trump administration seeks more time to reunite some migrant families split at border


Migrant families line up to enter a bus station after they were processed and released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on June 24. (David J. Phillip/AP)

by Maria Sacchetti July 6 at 8:14 PM Email the author

Lawyers for the Trump administration on Friday asked a federal judge for more time to reunite immigrant children with their parents, the latest signal that the government is struggling to bring families back together after separating thousands as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border earlier this year.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the government to return children younger than 5 to their parents by Tuesday, but federal lawyers said they could meet that deadline for only about half of the 101 children in that age group.

Officials say they have deployed hundreds of government employees and opened a command center usually reserved for natural disasters to match parents and children. But the massive effort is complicated by difficulty in locating some parents and, in other cases, uncertainty about the parents’ identities. Some parents have been deported and others have been freed in the United States, apparently without a system to monitor everyone’s whereabouts.

The judge ordered the government to deliver a list of the children’s names to the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit, by Saturday and said he would decide Monday whether to grant an extension.

“And then we can have a more intelligent conversation,” Sabraw said Friday at a status hearing on his order, adding that “then the court can determine whether it makes sense to relax the deadlines as far as reunification. But I would need more information.”

[ HHS secretary says Trump administration rushing to reunite migrant families separated at the border
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/hhs-secretary-says-trump-administration-rushing-to-reunite-migrant-families-separated-at-the-border/2018/07/05/70da04f2-8062-11e8-b0ef-fffcabeff946_story.html?utm_term=.2b4bd8856b12 ]

[Inside] 6:02 Listen to a father's call with the daughter who was taken from him
Arnovis Guidos Portillo asked his 6-year-old by phone about life in U.S. custody after he was sent back to El
Salvador. The two were set to be reunited June 28. (Video: Joshua Partlow/Photo: Fred Ramos/The Washington Post)

Friday’s hearing captured the frustrations over the Trump administration’s inability to get a handle on the number of parents separated from their children in recent months after implementation of President Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border. It also foreshadowed the troubles officials could face as they try, over the next three weeks, to locate the parents of roughly 3,000 children ages 5 to 18. The deadline is July 26.

Sabraw, appointed in 2003 by President George W. Bush, late last month ordered federal officials to reunite all families within 30 days, and children younger than 5 within two weeks. Families were initially apprehended together, and then parents were sent to criminal jails after being charged with illegally crossing the border, or to civil immigration agencies to seek asylum or face deportation. Children were sent to shelters overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services.

In court records, the agencies said they were not prepared to track the separated parents and children, which partly delayed their efforts to reunite them.

A Justice Department lawyer told the judge Friday that reunions should happen swiftly for approximately half of the 101 children younger than 5 who are being held in shelters.

“There are then some groups for whom the reunification process is more difficult,” lawyer Sarah Fabian told the judge. “In some cases if we’re not, for example, aware of where the parent is, I can’t commit to saying that reunification will be able to occur by the deadline.”

[Video] 1:49 'Port Isabel is a prison': A lawyer's view of separated migrant families
Jodi Goodwin is an immigration attorney working inside the Port Isabel detention center in Los Fresnos, Texas. (Jon Gerberg /The Washington Post)

Acknowledging that the numbers were in flux, she said the government had matched 86 parents to 83 children. Sixteen children had not been matched, and it remained unclear whether they crossed with their parents, she said. About 46 parents are in immigration custody, 19 were deported and 19 were released. Nine others are in the custody of U.S. marshals.

Two parents had criminal records that made them ineligible to regain custody of their children, Fabian said, noting that the figures she outlined were not a full accounting and that efforts to match families are ongoing.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU who brought the class-action lawsuit on behalf of parents separated from their children even before the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy took effect in May, told Sabraw that the government’s lack of record-keeping was “startling.”

“It just doesn’t make sense,” he said. “You’ve taken a child from a parent. They need to give the child back.”

Gelernt urged the judge to require the government to stick to the deadlines and said that thousands of lawyers are willing to help match parents with their children, which is why he asked the Justice Department for a list.

A parallel lawsuit .. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/17-states-and-dc-sue-over-trumps-family-separation-policy/2018/06/26/b32d2a6c-7975-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.e434b158c75e , brought last month by the Democratic attorneys general of 17 states and the District of Columbia, also seeks the rapid reunification of separated families. This week, the states asked a federal judge in Seattle to expedite discovery in the case, arguing that the government has not turned over key information — about its policies, separated families, and asylum seekers refused entry into the country — in response to repeated requests from state officials.

The states also argued that they need to gather testimony from migrant parents and children who are in federal custody and could be moved to different detention centers at any time. “Many of the key witnesses will likely be moved in the coming days and weeks with no assurances as to their well-being or whereabouts, and continued chaos is inevitable,” their motion says.

[ 17 states and D.C. sue over Trump’s family-separation policy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/17-states-and-dc-sue-over-trumps-family-separation-policy/2018/06/26/b32d2a6c-7975-11e8-80be-6d32e182a3bc_story.html?utm_term=.e434b158c75e ]

The motion includes hundreds of pages of sworn declarations from migrant parents and their advocates detailing alleged experiences that mothers, fathers and children have endured while trying to seek asylum in the United States. In one account, a 14-month-old baby fleeing El Salvador last year was separated from his father at a port of entry in Southern California. His mother, Olivia Caceres, sought asylum weeks later and — after enduring one bureaucratic hurdle after another, including a DNA test — was reunited with her son nearly three months after he was taken away. He was “full of dirt and lice,” Caceres said in her declaration. “It seemed like they had not bathed him the 85 days he was away from us.”

The child, identified only as “M.,” now cries inconsolably and is afraid to be alone, she said. “M. is not the same since we were reunited,” Caceres said.

Advocates for immigrants have blasted the Trump administration, suggesting officials have created bureaucratic obstacles to delay the reunions. Authorities say they are conducting DNA testing and background checks to protect children as required by a bipartisan anti-trafficking law enacted in 2008.

Susan Church, a Boston immigration lawyer, said the government could release migrants who are seeking asylum on bond so that they can find their children faster. She represents a Guatemalan woman who had an emotional reunion with her 8-year-old daughter this week after being separated for 55 days.

The girl turned 8 in a government shelter.

“I can’t believe they have the nerve to ask for more time,” Church said. “It’s outrageous. The government has a choice here, and that choice is to release people on bond and then reunification could happen immediately. But they’re choosing not to do that and asking the court for more time.”

A Justice Department spokesman declined to address questions seeking clarity on the administration’s desired timeline to reunite families. In a statement, an administration official said its priority was “to ensure the safety of the children in its custody.”

Dozens of government workers have descended on child shelters and immigration jails to conduct interviews and collect forms. But court records reveal the challenges ahead.

Robert Guadian, a senior official with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), called the process “difficult and time consuming” in court documents filed Friday. ICE detains parents for deportation but does not track whether they have been separated from their children, he said, noting that the parents of children younger than 5 are scattered in 23 immigration jails across 13 states.

Although all detained parents had spoken by phone to their children as of Friday, as Sabraw ordered, Guadian said officials still must complete criminal background checks on the parents.

Immigration officials said they have relocated 23 parents to facilities that are closer to the HHS shelters where their children are staying.

ICE is attempting to match many more parents to older children, who the judge said must be reunited within 30 days. Officials said the agency has completed approximately 300 background checks, which include criminal and immigration histories, but still has 1,400 to finish.

Emma Brown contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/immigration/trump-administration-seeks-to-extend-deadline-for-reuniting-some-migrant-families-split-at-border/2018/07/06/b3260a02-8131-11e8-b658-4f4d2a1aeef1_story.html?utm_term=.2ba0f79b6c82

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The Latest: Ruling Delayed on Family Reunification Deadline

By The Associated Press

July 6, 2018

SAN DIEGO — The Latest on the Trump administration's request for more time to reunify parents and children separated at the border (all times local):

2 p.m.

A judge has put off at least until Monday a ruling on a Trump administration request for more time to reunite more than 100 children under 5 who were separated from their parents after crossing the border.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Justice Department to share a list of the 101 children by Saturday afternoon with the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued the administration to force the young children and families to be reunited by Tuesday.

Sabraw scheduled a hearing Monday in San Diego, with the hope that the two sides could agree on which of the children can be excused from the deadline.

Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian says the administration has matched 86 parents to 83 children so far.

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1 p.m. .. More: https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/07/06/us/ap-us-immigration-separating-families-the-latest.html

Only an administration headed by such a man could get themselves and so many immigrant families into such a forlorn situation. A government which could
fairly be said to be characterized by a clumsy hostility. See, From the Travel Ban to Family Separations: Malevolence, Incompetence, Carelessness ..
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