Over 700 immigrant children have not been reunited with their families by the mandatory deadline
On June 20th, after widespread criticism, President Donald Trump announced that he would end the separation of families at the border, which came about due to his zero-tolerance immigration policy. However, the administration had no clear plan for how it would reunite families, and on June 26th, a federal judge ordered that immigrant families must be reunited within 30 days. That 30-day timeline has now passed, but more than 700 children still remain separated from their parents.
BBC News reports that, as of July 26th, 711 children had not been returned to their parents. Lawyers for the federal government reportedly said that the children were ineligible for reunification, stating that in some of these cases, the parents had waived their reunification rights, had a criminal record, or had a communicable disease. But the majority of these children — 431 — were ineligible because their parents were no longer in the country. And still other cases reportedly required “further evaluation.”
Today is the deadline for the Trump administration to reunite thousands of immigrant children that they forcefully separated from their parents. Call your Senator(s) at 202-224-3121 & ask them what they’re doing to reunite these families.
— Simar (@sahluwal) July 26, 2018
As The New Yorker notes, some immigrant advocates argue that the ineligibility “criteria” is suspect. Meanwhile, in a July 24th court hearing, a government lawyer failed to explain what “further evaluation” meant. The New Yorker also pointed out that in some instances where parents were barred from access due to “criminal records,” the criminal charges included things like driving while intoxicated and being “wanted by El Salvador.”
Michelle Brané, Director of the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, told The New Yorker that she suspected the government was trying to “narrow the class of families” legally required to be reunited.
"It is weeding out cases based on a lot of things that are not always legitimate or final," Brané said of the government.
"The continued trauma and injustice facing these families is a human rights crisis that this administration brought upon itself."— @MichelleBrane. Read WRC's statement after the gov't missed yet another deadline: https://t.co/HdloSCBvYN #EndFamilySeparation #EndFamilyDetention
— Women's Refugee Commission (@wrcommission) July 27, 2018
Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, told The New York Times that parents who signed away their rights to get their children back may not have meant to do so.
"We are aware of instances in which parents have felt coerced and didn’t fully understand the consequences of signing or did not feel they had a choice in the matter," Hincapié told the Times.
In response to the government missing yesterday’s deadline, the NILC tweeted that it had filed a Freedom of Information Request to obtain the records related to the reunification of families.
ICYMI: Yesterday we issued a FOIA request to seek all records related to reunifying and protecting the rights of all migrant parents and children that were separated due to the Trump administration's cruel and inhumane "zero-tolerance" policy. Read more: https://t.co/leH1oMTZYl
— National Immigration Law Center (@NILC) July 27, 2018
It’s heartbreaking to know that there are hundreds of children still separated from their families. If you want to help reunite immigrant families, you can donate to organizations like the NILC or the American Civil Liberties Union, contact your elected officials, or, if possible, attend one of several Families Belong Together protests on July 28th. All families deserve to be together, and we can’t stop fighting until these children are returned to their parents.
