U.S. says data on separated families not readily available - court filings

rooster59 · July 28, 2018

U.S. says data on separated families not readily available - court filings

By Reade Levinson and Kristina Cooke

Undocumented immigrant families walk from a bus depot to a respite center after being released from detention in McAllen, Texas, U.S., July 27, 2018. REUTERS/Loren Elliott

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The U.S. government said in court filings on Thursday that it lacked the technical capability to quickly provide states with information about children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy toward illegal immigrants.

As part of a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle challenging Trump's immigration policies, more than a dozen states have asked the federal government for lists of children separated from their parents, the location of each child, information on the separated parents and the government’s plans to reunite them.

The government said in Friday's filings that attempts to gather data to comply with states' requests would divert it from efforts to reunite families.

Jonathan White of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said in a filing on Thursday that the government would need to conduct a manual review to identify all separated children in each of the plaintiff states.

There was no automated way to create a list of separated children by state or by facility, he said.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that the computer system used to track immigrant children under HHS supervision has little ability to interact with the separate database used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to track the children's parents.

Users reported that the HHS system could only handle a limited number of users at once without crashing, lost saved data, had poor searchability and required significant manual work for even small updates.

In a separate filing on Thursday, David Jennings, an acting assistant director at ICE, said much of the information states requested about separated parents was not easily retrievable or searchable, especially for parents already released from ICE custody.

Immigration attorneys have said the difficulty retrieving information can delay reunification.

One attorney who declined to be named told Reuters on Friday that she represented a Honduran mother whose reunification with her child was “significantly delayed” because border patrol failed to link them in their database.

The mother crossed the border with the child’s original birth certificate and vaccination records, said the attorney, but these were taken from her after she was detained. The two were reunited in July after two months apart.

On Thursday, the government said it had reunited 1,442 children with their parents, while hundreds of children are still separated from their families.

Rights activists said on Friday that they were struggling to find immigrant families to confirm the U.S. government had met a July 26 court deadline to reunite "eligible" parents and children who had been separated.

Some children arrived at remote immigration detention centers this week only to spend the night in a car in the parking lot awaiting the parent's eventual release, immigration advocates and lawyers said.

Other children were sent to detention centers to meet their parents but were returned "in tears" to government shelters because of scheduling problems, Michelle Brané of the Women’s Refugee Commission told reporters on Thursday.

stevenl · July 28, 2018

Why is this no surprise.

They just don't know where they are.

zaphod reborn · July 28, 2018

There never was a plan to reunify upon deportation. It was a thinly-veiled kidnapping plot, because Trump thinks brown people are animals.

helpisgood · July 28, 2018

This embarrasses the USA. They separated children from their parents and did not bother to keep track of them? This is not a liberal or conservative or any other kind of ideological issue, it's just has to do with basic decency and morality. Even if they should not be allowed in, they could at least not lose their kid(s).

I think Michelle Wolf's show lampoons the whole operation well on the following YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNF6sVurAuI

JAG · July 28, 2018

If the US immigration authorities have separated children from their families, and have not managed to keep a record, and as a result are unable to reunite them within say 24 hours, then that is an utter disgrace. In any civilised country, those responsible would lose their jobs. What has happened to the United States of America?

Tug · July 28, 2018

No excuse I say lose all the trump kids and grand kids just absolutely inexcusable and lose kelleyannes kids as well then listen to them scream!!!NO EXCUSE!!!

Trouble · July 28, 2018

8 hours ago, zaphod reborn said:

There never was a plan to reunify upon deportation. It was a thinly-veiled kidnapping plot, because Trump thinks brown people are animals.

Please find me a quote where Trump called brown people animals? He called MS-13 animals. Honestly, all humans are animals and they are worst and most destructive species on the planet.

quandow · July 28, 2018

They can track down the farm from where beef with mad cow disease came but they can't reunite these children?

Credo · July 28, 2018

Now there are reports of abuse of children in these facilities:

Police reports show child sex abuse is rampant at immigrant detention facilities under Trump

The reports show hundreds of allegations of sexual offenses, fights, and missing children. Something to consider: most abuse probably goes unreported, because the kids are fearful of doing anything to jeopardize their chances of seeing their moms or dads again.

Excerpt:

“If you’re a predator, it’s a gold mine,” said Lisa Fortuna, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center. “You have full access and then you have kids that have already had this history of being victimized.”

https://boingboing.net/2018/07/27/636762.html

And this one:

A 6-Year-Old Girl Was Sexually Abused in an Immigrant-Detention Center

Separated from her mother by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, the child was forced to sign a statement confirming that she understood it was her responsibility to stay away from her abuser.

https://www.thenation.com/article/six-year-old-girl-sexually-abused-immigrant-detention-center/

And from the same article it seems that the 6 year old was separated from her mother after entering the country legally:

According to the family, the pair entered the United States at a point of entry in El Paso, Texas, on May 24, where they presented Border Patrol authorities with paperwork claiming that they had “credible fear” that returning to Guatemala would result in harm. On May 26, government officials separated D.L. from her mother and sent her to Casa Glendale, a shelter outside of Phoenix operated by Southwest Key Programs. It was there that the alleged abuse occurred.

Edited July 28, 2018 by Credo

zaphod reborn · July 28, 2018

6 hours ago, Trouble said:

Please find me a quote where Trump called brown people animals? He called MS-13 animals. Honestly, all humans are animals and they are worst and most destructive species on the planet.

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

“They don’t care about crime and want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country, like MS-13”. He's comparing hispanic desire to immigrate to MS-13, he's not talking about MS-13.

Judge Curiel had "an absolute conflict" in presiding over the litigation given that he is "of Mexican heritage" and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association. This is the presiding judge for the Trump Univ case which Trump settled for $25 million. He was upset that he wasn't awarded summary judgment when the class representative was changed by the plainiffs' attorney.

Dickerson: How do his Mexican parents have to do with him not ruling for you?

Trump: He is a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. But I say he's got bias. You know, we have to stop being so politically correct in this country.

When you have a Wikipedia entry about making racist statements, guess what? You're probably a racist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump#Immigration_policy

JAG · July 29, 2018

3 hours ago, quandow said:

They can track down the farm from where beef with mad cow disease came but they can't reunite these children?

Perhaps because the agency responsible for tracking mad cow disease is run by decent people motivated by public service, whereas the agencies responsible for dealing with migrants and their children are staffed by...

People with small hands and white polo shirts?

"Some very fine people"?

Edited July 29, 2018 by JAG

mtls2005 · July 29, 2018

It almost sounds like the United States Government is trafficking in children?

Maybe ICE could pitch in to help locate these children/families?

utalkin2me · July 29, 2018

The strange part about this story is as Trump the candidate, all he needed to do was head down there, hold some of those kids in his hands, made an announcement he will reunite every one of them, and he would be reelected almost without a doubt.

Rigby40 · July 29, 2018

1 hour ago, zaphod reborn said:

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Another failure to deliver any evidence on how Trump hates brown people, not surprised.

You are aware that there are plenty of white Mexicans right? This might come as another shocker to you, but some are white with blue eyes. ?

Edited July 29, 2018 by Rigby40

Credo · July 29, 2018

14 minutes ago, Rigby40 said:

Another failure to deliver any evidence on how Trump hates brown people, not surprised.

You are aware that there are plenty of white Mexicans right? This might come as another shocker to you, but some are white with blue eyes. ?

Even the Mexican gov't doesn't call them white Mexicans. They refer to those 'looking' more like they are European as Fair skinned Mexicans.

As far as Trump goes, if you are dark, you aren't welcome. If you are, as he said, Norwegian, then you are welcome.

Rigby40 · July 29, 2018

4 minutes ago, Credo said:

As far as Trump goes, if you are dark, you aren't welcome. If you are, as he said, Norwegian, then you are welcome.

More baseless nonsense, just as expected time and time again.

As a mixed hispanic myself, you have to know we were laughing our a**es off at all the holier-than-thou white people running around telling us how if Trump became president he was going to deport us and kill the homosexuals ?All my brown family members are still here, even my grandmother who can't speak English who you'd think would be first to go ?

utalkin2me · July 29, 2018

2 hours ago, Rigby40 said:

More baseless nonsense, just as expected time and time again.

As a mixed hispanic myself, you have to know we were laughing our a**es off at all the holier-than-thou white people running around telling us how if Trump became president he was going to deport us and kill the homosexuals ?All my brown family members are still here, even my grandmother who can't speak English who you'd think would be first to go ?

The ones I see laughing their asses off are professional political analysts. There is not a single doubt left, this is the biggest joke of a president the united states has ever seen. The guy tweets like a 12 year old, what more needs to be said really?

Rigby40 · July 29, 2018

4 minutes ago, utalkin2me said:

The ones I see laughing their asses off are professional political analysts. There is not a single doubt left, this is the biggest joke of a president the united states has ever seen. The guy tweets like a 12 year old, what more needs to be said really?

I could care less what professional political analysts think.

It's about time we had someone with stones in the white house. I'm absolutely loving it!

utalkin2me · July 29, 2018

13 hours ago, Rigby40 said:

I could care less what professional political analysts think.

It's about time we had someone with stones in the white house. I'm absolutely loving it!

I actually do like that about him. I just wish it was a different person with stones.

jenny2017 · July 29, 2018

On 7/28/2018 at 3:11 PM, zaphod reborn said:

There never was a plan to reunify upon deportation. It was a thinly-veiled kidnapping plot, because Trump thinks brown people are animals.

And some people do not seem to realize that he's the animal. And areal nasty breed.

jenny2017 · July 29, 2018

13 hours ago, utalkin2me said:

The ones I see laughing their asses off are professional political analysts. There is not a single doubt left, this is the biggest joke of a president the united states has ever seen. The guy tweets like a 12 year old, what more needs to be said really?

Please never underestimate the intelligence of 12-year-olds. Maybe more than a 7-year-old?? -

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