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By Daniella Silva
According to reports released Thursday by a human rights group, migrant families are still separated by the Trump government, sometimes as a result of "unsubstantiated allegations" of crimes.
"Family separations are still taking place on the southern border, they are still torn apart by the US government," NBC News spokesman Efrén Olivares, director of racial and economic justice at the Texas Civil Rights Project, told NBC News.
While separations did not occur on the same scale as when the Trump government announced the "zero tolerance" policy last spring, some occurred under troubling circumstances, Olivares said. The report, which examined cases between June 22 and December 17 in McAllen, Texas, was released about eight months ago. The government has officially ended this policy.
The report found 38 cases of parents and legal guardians separated from their children.
One of the cases concerned Mr. Perez-Domingo, an immigrant father from Guatemala whose mother tongue is Mam, according to the report. Perez-Domingo was separated from her 2-year-old daughter in July after being charged by the Customs and Border Protection Service for not being the biological father of the girl and providing a birth certificate fraudulent, according to the report. He did not have an interpreter during his interview.
The civil rights group said they had investigated the incident and discovered that the birth certificate was genuine and that a DNA test had determined that Perez-Domingo was the father of the child . They were gathered in August.
"The lack of assistance from the translators, coupled with aggressive interrogation by the CBP officer, has resulted in serious discrimination and traumatic consequences for this indigenous family," the report says, adding that the group has not yet been able to respond. He had "not asked this father at the beginning of the process". it is highly likely that Mr. Perez-Domingo was deported without his illegally orphaned daughter and child in the United States. "
The report lists another migrant father, identified as Mr. A, whose daughter and 9-year-old son were kidnapped for "unsubstantiated allegations of gang membership". The civil rights group has claimed that a human history investigation has failed to find evidence of criminal convictions known in the United States or his country of El Salvador, or affiliation to a gang.
After the end of the "zero tolerance," officials said the immigration authorities separated families only if the adult was not the parent or guardian of the child, if the safety of the child was threatened or because of "serious criminal activity". by the adult.
Customs and Border Protection said in a statement that the Texas Civil Rights Project had "released a false report without asking for or including any contribution" from the federal agency. He also claimed that the civil rights group had used erroneous data, including "all types of family relationships regardless of the legal definition" of an unaccompanied migrant child.
On the basis of this definition, Customs and Border Protection have recognized a total of 38 separations of families in McAllen.
The Texas Civil Rights Project revealed that it had examined approximately 9,800 adult migrants prosecuted for illegal entry into the United States and 492 adults prosecuted for illegal return, most of them from Central America. Families were interviewed before their hearings before a federal courthouse in McAllen.
Among these cases, 272 cases of separated families, including 34 separations of parents and children, 107 cases of separated siblings, 62 cases of separated children of aunts or uncles and of uncles. other cases of separation of cousins, grandparents, guardians, in-laws or other guardians. The youngest was 8 months and a half when she was separated from her mother.
In December, the Department of Homeland Security announced that from June 21 to November 30, 81 children and 76 adults had been separated.
Under the "zero tolerance" policy of the spring and beginning of last summer, migrants were prosecuted for illegally crossing the border, a crime for the first offense. The parents then ended up in federal institutions and their children were separated from them.
After a wave of criticism from both parties and growing protests across the country, President Donald Trump announced the end of his policy in June. Later in the month, a federal judge also ordered the government to reunite many separated families.
The government has identified more than 2,700 separated children under the policy. But it is estimated that many others would have been separated since the summer of 2017, according to a report by the Inspector General of HHS.
On Thursday afternoon, the American Civil Liberties Union will argue in federal court that families separated before the June 2018 judgment should be covered by the reunification lawsuit.
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