Judge can send the government scrambling to separate families

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Should the government be forced to sift through a multitude of files and potentially identify thousands of additional families that have been separated?

ACLU lawyers are pushing for this, but government lawyers vehemently oppose it.

US District Judge Dana Sabraw promised Thursday to rule as soon as possible. According to his comments in court, he is not inclined to side with the government.

If that is the case, it is a big problem. This could mean that the government will be forced to carry out follow-up efforts, as we have seen in the summer, but on an even larger scale.

Here is an overview of what we learned at the last hearing, what is happening and how important it is:

The judge repeatedly stressed the importance of an "accounting".

Through a report from the Inspector General of Health and Human Services, we recently learned that thousands more parents and children would have been separated by the US government compared to what the officials had indicated.

A federal judge presses the administration of family separations prior to June 2018
Sabraw's decision last June, which prompted a massive effort to reunite thousands of immigrant families that the US government had separated, did not cover these families. Indeed, this other group of separated children had already been released by the government.

We do not know who these families are or what happened to them.

This did not seem to appeal to Sabraw when he lobbied government lawyers on Thursday.

"Is not it important to have an accounting, just an accounting of what happened to who, how much are involved and where are they?" He asked.

The government really does not want that to happen.

Justice Department lawyer Scott Stewart used a variety of arguments to convince the judge that expanding the file to separated families before June 26, 2018 was not a good idea.

He repeatedly stressed how much the government would have to undertake a new list of separated families.

Requiring this, he said, would "bring the case to full value". He called the notion of "seismic change" and "dramatic change".

The ACLU is ready to do everything in its power to find separated families.

ACLU's lawyer, Lee Gelernt, said the organization was ready to set up another steering committee to trace separated families.

"We are ready, whatever the burden, to assume that," he said, noting that the consequences could be terrible.

"We are talking about potentially orphaned young children permanently," he said.

Even if the judge orders the government to identify these families, they may not be reunited.

After Sabraw's order over the summer, officials identified separate families and began a tedious process of reunification.

It took 246 days for this separate family to come together

But there is no guarantee that the process will be the same this time.

Sabraw noted Thursday that family reunification is only one of the potential remedies.

"The blame is the government's conduct of separating families in terms of politics," he said.

According to Sabraw, the appropriate remedy for these other families could be determined later.

"If this motion is accepted, the first step, which is a very important step, would be accounting," he said. "What are the numbers, who are they, where are they?"

Identifying what happened is important, the judge said.

"In a claim of injury of this magnitude," he said, "one of the most fundamental duties of law is to determine the scope of the harm".

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