All migrant kids under 5 to be back with parents by Thursday - U.S. official

[webfact]

All migrant kids under 5 to be back with parents by Thursday - U.S. official

By Tom Hals

 

Javier, a 30-year-old from Honduras, holds his 4-year-old son William during a media availability in New York after they were reunited after being separated for 55 days following their detention at the Texas border, July 11, 2018. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

 

(Reuters) - All migrant children under age 5 who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border will have been reunited with their parents by early Thursday morning if they were eligible, a Trump administration official said in a statement on Wednesday.

 

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the government over its separation policies, disputed that assertion.

 

“Their statement is vague at a minimum," said attorney Lee Gelernt, noting that a San Diego judge had set a deadline of Tuesday for reuniting those children. "We know they missed the deadline.”

 

The government has said some children were not eligible for reunification because the parent was deported, had a criminal record or was otherwise unfit.

 

U.S. Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego had ordered the government to reunite the children under the age of 5 by Tuesday and all separated children by July 26.

 

On Thursday, the government will give Sabraw a progress report on the younger children and whether it expects to meet the deadline for the older group.

 

The government has said around 2,300 children were separated from their parents at the border under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy on illegal immigration, which was abandoned in June after intense protests.

 

The ACLU's Gelernt said the government is not even close to reuniting all the children under 5 with their parents, including 12 adults who were deported without their children. He said they government has not told him how many children have been reunified with parents.

 

“I’ve asked the government for numbers and they should have told me by now,” he told Reuters.

 

Since the government first came under pressure to ease its policy on separations weeks ago, it has shifted its estimates of the number of children it would reunite.

 

The latest figures released by the government were early on Tuesday, when officials said that four children under 5 had been reunited and at least 34 more would be with their parents by the end of the day.

 

Catholic Charities, which helped place some of the children in shelter facilities after their separation, held a news briefing in New York at which a handful of the reunited parents expressed relief after weeks of anxiety over the separations.

 

“I’m happy to finally be able to be with my child. I will never be separated from him, no matter what," said a tearful Javier, a 30-year-old from Honduras, who was reunited with his 4-year-old son after 55 days of detention. "Those were the worst days of my life. I never imagined that this would happen.”

 

The organization provided first names only.

 

The struggle to track and match parents with children under 5 suggests the government may have more difficulties in meeting a July 26 deadline for reuniting the remaining 2,000 older children with adults from whom they were separated.

 

"That is going to be a significant undertaking," Sabraw said on Tuesday of the next deadline.

 

U.S. President Donald Trump took to Twitter on Wednesday to blame the Democratic Party, among others, for failing to fix what he has characterized as a broken immigration system.

 

"Judges run the system and illegals and traffickers know how it works. They are just using children!" he said.

 

One immigration advocate told Reuters she was still awaiting details on when officials would return two children younger than 5 to their parents. One parent was from Honduras and the other from El Salvador.

 

"Our clients still have not been reunified!" said Beth Krause, an attorney with Legal Aid Society's Immigrant Youth Project, in an email to Reuters. She said the government said one would be reunited sometime Wednesday.

 

If the government failed to reunite all the children under 5 with their parents by Thursday, Sabraw asked the ACLU to suggest penalties he could levy against the government.

 

Rights advocates have blamed the U.S. government's poor technology for difficulties tracking children across multiple government agencies involved in their detention and care.

 

The government has said the delays stem from the time it takes to run background checks, confirm parentage and locate parents released from detention.

 

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; additional reporting by Jonathan Allen and Yeganeh Torbati in New York and Eric Beech in Washington; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Lisa Shumaker)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-07-12

 

[scorecard]

Is it possible to roll back the clock and check if Trump and wife and all their parents etc.,entered the US legally?

[sukhumvitneon]

CBP could set up a sort of coat check system where the illegals can pick up their kids on their way out of the country.

[bristolboy]

2 hours ago, scorecard said:

Is it possible to roll back the clock and check if Trump and wife and all their parents etc.,entered the US legally?

There are serious questions about whether Melania violated immigration law:

Gaps in Melania Trump's immigration story raise questions

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648

[ehs818]

I have a solution for the Judge. Remove the head of HHS, Alex Azar. Charge him with kidnapping, blackmail, and hostage taking. Order the budget for this organization to be increased to reflect the cost of reuniting deported parents, returning the kids to the point of entry and arrest. Offer psychological help to those affected by the separation, and allow those illegally separated to sue in Federal Court for damages. Trump-what an idiot. Take a non problem, make it into a big problem, then offer solutions that don't correct the problem fully. Ass.

[Srikcir]

2 hours ago, ehs818 said:

Remove the head of HHS, Alex Azar. Charge him with kidnapping, blackmail, and hostage taking. Order the budget for this organization to be increased to reflect the cost of reuniting deported parents, returning the kids to the point of entry and arrest.

Unfortunately, none of these actions are within the authority of a judge.

Either Congress, DHS or DOJ has such authority.

[kamahele]

4 hours ago, scorecard said:

Is it possible to roll back the clock and check if Trump and wife and all their parents etc.,entered the US legally?

Trump's in laws have entered legally under the family reunification program (chain migration) which he is trying to eliminate. Whether or not his wife entered legally is another story.

[bristolboy]

31 minutes ago, kamahele said:

Trump's in laws have entered legally under the family reunification program (chain migration) which he is trying to eliminate. Whether or not his wife entered legally is another story.

Of course, if it turns out she didn't, that would mean her parents wouldn't have entered legally either.

[Tug]

Let’s lock up and lose Ivanka kids and little Barron lose them and see how Donald feels.bottom line someone comes asking for shelter,give that shelter check it out if it is true grant shelter if not return them to there home country that is the correct thing to do but Donald can’t wip up his base and create division chaos hate etc all the things he thrives on what a sicko!

[thaibeachlovers]

On ‎7‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 10:25 AM, webfact said:

if they were eligible

Some children were brought by people that are not their parents- trafficked. I hope people don't want them returned to the non parents that brought them.

[bristolboy]

On 7/12/2018 at 7:35 PM, Tug said:

Let’s lock up and lose Ivanka kids and little Barron lose them and see how Donald feels.bottom line someone comes asking for shelter,give that shelter check it out if it is true grant shelter if not return them to there home country that is the correct thing to do but Donald can’t wip up his base and create division chaos hate etc all the things he thrives on what a sicko!

Given the amount of attention he paid to his older children while they were growing up, I'd bet he wouldn't feel much.

[Scott]

3 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

Some children were brought by people that are not their parents- trafficked. I hope people don't want them returned to the non parents that brought them.

The trafficking of children is not common and you can be assured that the moment those children lose their value, the traffickers have no interest in getting them back.   Even unaccompanied minors being brought across the border are sometimes simply abandoned in the desert.

 

A trafficked child is a liability once either the trafficker or the child are apprehended.

 

[Opl]

Trump’s migrant fiasco diverts millions from health programs

"HHS is forced to prioritize migrant crisis over medical research and other goals.The health department has quietly dipped into tens of millions of dollars to pay for the consequences of President Donald Trump’s border policy, angering advocates who want the money spent on medical research, rural health programs and other priorities."

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/07/18/trump-migrants-health-programs-692955

[Credo]

For a program that is starting to see funds in the billion dollar range for facilities, it's not doing a very stellar job of caring for kids:

 

Drinking Toilet Water, Widespread Abuse: Report Details ‘Torture’ For Child Detainees

In a new court filing, migrant children and their parents describe being forced to “strip naked,” hunger and physical assault.

 

Over the course of four days in June, Keylin says, U.S. Border Patrol guards would kick her body to keep her awake throughout the night. The 16-year-old, whose last name was redacted from court documents, told a lawyer that she would lie in fear on the cement floor of the Border Patrol station in Texas, surrounded by chain-link fence.

 

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/migrant-children-detail-experiences-border-patrol-stations-detention-centers_us_5b4d13ffe4b0de86f485ade8

[JAG]

On 7/12/2018 at 1:08 PM, bristolboy said:

There are serious questions about whether Melania violated immigration law:

Gaps in Melania Trump's immigration story raise questions

https://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/melania-trump-immigration-donald-226648

Irrelevant.

Doesn't count.

She is white.

[yogi100]

If these migrants are illegal then it seems probable that they've broken the law and have been locked up for having committed an offence. Just like thousands of other parents have been locked up all over the world, you can't expect the authorities concerned to allow parents take their kids to jail with them.

 

It does not happen in Theresa May's Britain, Angela Merkel's Germany so why should it happen in Trump's America?

[mtls2005]

On 7/12/2018 at 10:25 AM, webfact said:

All migrant kids under 5 to be back with parents by Thursday - U.S. official

 

Hopefully with THEIR parents.