Can take 2 years to identify children

While the Trump administration was attacking what it calls a growing "crisis" at the US-Mexico border, officials said in court that it might take two years in government to identify thousands of migrant children separated from their families. .

The document tabled Friday outlined the government's plan to use data analysis and manual reviews to examine the cases of approximately 47,000 children arrested by US immigration officers between the 1st July 2017 and June 25, 2018, to identify which children could have been taken away. family members. He said the process "would take at least 12 months or even 24 months".

Last month, US District Judge Dana Sabraw increased the number of migrant families that the government might be forced to reunite under her previous order after a report by the Inspector General revealed that The administration had put in place an undisclosed family separation pilot program as of July 2017. The decision was made in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Judge: The Trump administration may have to reunite thousands of additional migrant families

"The administration refuses to urgently deal with the family separation crisis that it has created," the ACLU said Saturday in a statement. "We strongly oppose any plan that gives the government up to two years to find children.The government has quickly assembled resources to separate families.It must do the same to repair the damage."

In recent months, the number of families arriving in the United States has reached unprecedented highs, putting a strain on an already overloaded immigration system. In the past, most people seeking to cross the border illegally were single Mexican nationals, mostly men, who were looking for work.

Today, more than half are parents and children fleeing poor countries in Central America where violent crime is commonplace.

"The numbers are huge right now," Gregory Archambault, director of control and disposal operations in San Diego of the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the Associated Press. "Everyone is stressed because there are a lot of people."

"More and more people are now accepting that it is a real crisis," said Sunday Mick Mulvaney, Acting White House chief of staff, during the meeting. an interview with Fox News.

Mulvaney said that issues relating to migrant families and children of unaccompanied migrants required congressional action, as "nothing can legally be reserved by the (Department of Homeland Security) to children".

Representative Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., Said the Democrats want to work with the president on a solution.

"Separating children from their families at the border is not human – it's not what the US should do, and we continue to see the government engaging in these policies." said Luján in "Fox News Sunday".

Friday's trial was held the same day that President Donald Trump declared that there was "an emergency on our southern border" during a border visit to Calexico, California. He cited an increase in the number of migrants arriving at the border in recent months.

"It's a colossal wave and the immigration system is overloaded, and we can not let that happen," said Trump.

"We can not take you anymore, we can not take you, our country is full," he warned those who might try to come to the United States.

Like Trump, Mulvaney praised Mexico for arresting migrants in recent days, allegedly provoked by Trump's threats to close the border or impose tariffs on Mexico's auto exports. if the country did not do more to stem the flow of migrants from the north.

Despite White House claims that Mexico apprehended migrants for the "first time in decades", hundreds of thousands of migrants have been arrested in the last four years in the "Northern Triangle" countries (Guatemala , El Salvador and Honduras). Mexico said the figures for the last few months were "pretty much average".

"There is no major change," said Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard this week. "There was no radical change."

Verification of the facts: Trump is wrong about the apprehensions of Mexican migrants

Luján said that Trump "continues to use immigration as a distraction". He questioned whether the US Department of Homeland Security "accurately described" his apprehension statistics because he said that many families were voluntarily applying for refugee status.

"This is not the national security crisis that the president continues to describe," said Luján. "There is a humanitarian crisis but it was created by President Donald Trump."

Some immigration experts agree with Luján's assessment. They say that Trump's policies have caused so much chaos along the border that they may be encouraging illegal crossings.

For example, the family separation controversy has highlighted the fact that families will not be detained for a long time in the United States if they are detained.

And counters, in which people are asked to return to a port of entry occupied another day to seek asylum, may have prompted asylum seekers to illegally pass, said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute. , a non-partisan think tank.

"This political chaos, combined with the feeling that the US government could at some point actually close the border, has created an urgency to migrate now as long as it is still possible," Selee said.

More: Fourth person in six months dead at ICE migrant detention center

contributing: Alan Gomez, USA TODAY & # 39; HUI; The Associated Press

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