Tensions rise

Tensions rise at court deadline to reunite migrant families

By TED HESSON and RENUKA RAYASAM

The dispute over family separations intensified Thursday as the Trump administration reached a court-ordered deadline to reunite parents and children divided at the border.

In a court filing, the Justice Department said it expected by the end of the day to reconnect all currently “eligible” migrant parents who have children ages 5 to 17.

But 711 children remained separated from their parents — enraging advocates who contend the administration hasn’t made a good faith effort to undo the damage caused by President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” border enforcement strategy. The policy, which targeted all suspected border crossers for federal prosecution, caused thousands of family separations from April to June.

Of 2,551 children identified as separated from a parent at the border, 1,442 have been reunited with a parent in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to the Justice Department filing.

Another 378 children were placed with parents or sponsors outside of ICE custody or reunified with parents earlier in the process, according to DOJ. Some of those children turned 18 while in custody, the filing said.

The administration said that in the cases of 20 children, further review found they were not split apart from a parent.

The list of not-yet-reunited children included minors whose parents were deemed ineligible to reconnect because of a criminal record or danger to the child. But more than half of the cases appeared to involve a parent who was “not available for discharge at this time.”

A subset of 431 children had parents who were currently outside the U.S., likely because of deportations or voluntary departures. Another 79 children had a parent who had been released into the United States.

In the cases of 120 children, the administration said parents had waived reunification, a process criticized this week in written court declarations from legal service providers.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw in court earlier this week appeared willing to deal with possible reunification for the families outside the administration’s “eligible” pool after Thursday’s deadline — although how he’ll proceed remains unclear.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the plaintiffs in the class-action litigation, said Thursday that reuniting deported parents with their children would need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis.

The ACLU will want “every single piece of information” that the administration maintains on the deported parents to help track them down, Gelernt said.

“I don’t have a magic bullet,” he said during a call with reporters. “I just think it’s going to be really hard detective work.”

Complicating matters could be whether non-governmental organizations or administration officials will be able to work with foreign governments. In some cases, migrants intercepted at the southwest border may have intended to seek asylum based on conditions in their home countries, according to Gelernt.

A further point of contention will be whether the deported parents were offered the option to bring their child with them upon removal. An administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday that as many as 350 parents may have departed the U.S. without being given the option to take their children with them, citing a lack of documentation by DHS.

Matthew Albence, executive associate director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm, said on a call with reporters Thursday that it was “long-standing ICE policy“ to offer parents the chance to reunify with a child before deportation.

But Albence dodged a question about what evidence the agency maintains to prove it offered a parent the chance to reunify with their child before deportation.

He cited an ICE directive that calls for reunification "to the extent practicable," but didn’t elaborate on how records are kept.

“Many parents decline this opportunity and it results in the child staying here in the country,” he said.

The ICE official also praised the work by his agency — lately the target of liberal outrage — during the reunification process.

Albence said ICE “dedicated an inordinate amount of resources“ to bring parents and children back together, adding that eight detention centers in the southwest were made “as family friendly as possible“ as part of the process.

The fate of deported parents could hinge on how Judge Sabraw chooses to approach the issue in the coming days. The Trump administration did not classify parents outside the U.S. as part of its “eligible” pool in the run-up to the deadline, but proposed in the court filing Thursday to develop a plan to work collaboratively with plaintiffs to locate those individuals.

The parties will meet in court Friday afternoon to discuss the state of the reunification process. Another issue likely to surface will be the ACLU’s request to halt deportations of migrants parents for seven days. Sabraw temporarily paused deportations of reunified parents on July 16 pending the outcome of the ACLU’s request.

Albence said Thursday that 223 families presently were being held in a pair of family detention centers in South Texas.

Earlier in the day, legal service providers argued that a chaotic reunification process had made it difficult for pro bono attorneys to reach migrant parents and children.

Maria Odom, vice president of legal services at the non-profit Kids in Need of Defense, said children had been moved in the middle of the night and couldn’t be located by her organization for days.

In one case, a pair of children were sent from a federal migrant shelter in New York to Texas, but their mother was already deported back to their home country before they arrived, according to the group.

Odom, who served as ombudsman of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during the Obama administration, said KIND still didn’t know the whereabouts of 30 children it represents beyond that they had been transferred out of New York.

Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights and justice at the Women’s Refugee Commission, described “chaos and confusion” during visits this week to a family detention center and children’s shelter in Texas.

“We saw children who were afraid to leave their parents side for even for a minute,” she said of a visit to a 2,400-bed family detention center in Dilley, Texas.