San Diego court orders reuniting families of separated immigrants
A court in the US city of San Diego has ordered that all children detained at the border be reunited with their families in the next 30 days and in the next 14 days if they are under 5 years of age, in response to a lawsuit filed by civil rights defense association ACLU. If the children are under 5 years of age, they must meet in 14 days after the order of US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego is issued. Sabraw, a person appointed by President George W. Bush, also issued a national court order on future family separations, unless the father considers himself unfit or unwilling to be with the child.
It also requires the Government to provide telephone contact between parents and their children in 10 days. In addition, parents can not be deported from the United States without their children. "The government keeps track of the personal property of the detainees in the criminal and immigration proceedings," federal judge Dana Sabraw wrote in his 24-page order. "Money, important documents and cars, to name a few, are cataloged, stored and traced at all levels: state and federal, citizen and foreign. However, the Government does not have an established system to monitor, provide effective communication and quickly register foreign children. The unfortunate reality is that under the current system, immigrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as the property. Certainly, that can not satisfy the requirements of due process." The judge affirms that the right to the integrity of the family is protected by the Constitution. Sabraw reasons that separating families and applying the law at the border are different things, and that guaranteeing their right to be together does not affect at all the ability of the Government to protect the borders of the United States.
The order was issued despite objections from the Trump Administration, which asked Sabraw to suspend the issuance of the mandate while the agencies worked to implement the executive order issued last week by President Donald Trump, which aims to end the policy of family separation. The government decided to back down the separation of families after the unanimous rejection inside and outside the US that caused the measure following the dissemination of images of children alone and locked in enclosures, in some cases divided into cages. In addition, the judge assures in the order that "the record also reflects that the practice of family separation was taking place before the policy of zero tolerance was announced, and that practice has resulted in the casual, if not deliberate, separation of families that are presented legally at the port of entry, not only those who cross the country illegally." The judge described the separation of families as a "chaotic circumstance created by the Government itself." Sabraw acted in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union filed in February over the alleged separation of an asylum seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo from her 7-year-old son. They met in March, but the ACLU added another plaintiff: a Brazilian woman who was separated from her 14-year-old son while being prosecuted for illegally crossing the Mexican border.
Since last May, systematic prosecutions against parents who cross the border with their children led to the separation of more than 2,300 children, generating criticism in the United States and abroad. Last week, faced with the clamor in the ranks of his own party and the UN, Trump signed a decree suspending the separation of parents and children who entered the United States illegally, many of them in asylum seeking escape from violence and poverty in countries of Central America. "This decision is a great victory for parents and children who thought they would never see each other again," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project. "Tears will flow in detention centers across the country when families find out that they will meet."
The decision came on the same day that another legal battle began in the same direction. A total of 18 states, led by California, Massachusetts and New York, filed a joint lawsuit against the federal government alleging that the separation of families violates the right to due process and is unconstitutional. The lawsuit asks the judge to force the government to respond to all requests for asylum, to reunite the separated families "immediately", that conditions can not be put to reunification and that the deportations of parents without their children are prevented.
New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood said in a press release that migrant children held in that city had to be treated for depression and suicidal behavior. "By ripping children off their parents and sending them hundreds of miles away, the Trump administration has already caused them immeasurable trauma and, at the same time, undermined New York's fundamental interests to protect their health, safety and well-being," she assured.
For his part US Vice President Mike Pence warned undocumented immigrants at a press conference in Brazil on Tuesday not to "risk the lives of their children" by trying to enter his country illegally. He said he had a "straight from the heart" message for those planning a trip to the United States: "If you can not come legally, do not come at all." The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the US Department of Health confirmed on Tuesday that 2,047 migrant children were under their guardianship. The minors had been sent to detention cells, reconverted warehouses, tents in the desert or foster homes around the US. The director of the ORR, Scott Lloyd, refused to say whether his institution is still receiving migrant children separated from their families.