A judge in California on Tuesday ordered US border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days, setting a hard deadline in a process that has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might again see their parents.
If children are younger than five, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order issued by US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.
Sabraw, an appointee of former US president George W. Bush, also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or does not want to be with the child.
Photo: Reuters
He also requires the government provide telephone contact between parents and their children within 10 days.
More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents and placed in US government-contracted shelters — hundreds of kilometers away, in some cases — under a now-abandoned policy toward families caught illegally entering the US.
Amid an international outcry, US President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families, and said parents and children would instead be detained together.
A US Department of Homeland Security statement over the weekend on reuniting families only seemed to sow more confusion.
“The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance — responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government’s own making,” Sabraw wrote. “They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our constitution.”
The ruling was a win for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed the lawsuit in March involving a seven-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.
“Tears will be flowing in detention centers across the country when the families learn they will be reunited,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said.
It was not clear how border authorities would meet the deadline.
US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday told US Congress that his department still has custody of 2,047 immigrant children separated from their parents at the border.
That is only six fewer children than the number in custody as of Wednesday last week.
Democratic senators said that was not nearly enough progress.
Under questioning, Azar refused to be pinned down on how long it would take to reunite families.
He said his department does extensive vetting of parents to make sure they are not traffickers masquerading as parents.
Also challenging would be the requirement the judge set on telephone contact.
At a Texas detention facility, immigrant advocates complained that parents have gotten busy signals or no answers from a 1-800 number provided by federal authorities to get information about their children.
Attorneys have spoken to about 200 immigrants at the Port Isabel detention facility near Los Fresnos, Texas, since last week and only a few knew where their children were being held, said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia.
“The US government never had any plan to reunite these families that were separated [and now it is] scrambling to undo this terrible thing that they have done,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said.
The decision comes as 17 states, including New York and California, sued the Trump administration to force it to reunite children and parents.
The states, all led by Democratic attorneys general, joined Washington in filing the lawsuit in federal court in Seattle.
“The administration’s practice of separating families is cruel, plain and simple,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in a statement. “Every day, it seems like the administration is issuing new, contradictory policies and relying on new, contradictory justifications, but we can’t forget: The lives of real people hang in the balance.”
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