The identification of separated families can take 2 years

Several factors complicate the process, officials said Friday in a court case:

• All children in this group of separated families have already been released by the government

• Prior to April 19, 2018, the United States Customs and Border Protection had not begun to search for separated families in a searchable dataset.

• A manual review alone would "overload the ORR's existing resources" as teams are expected to travel close to 50,000 files.

Instead of adopting this approach, managers propose to use data analysis to determine which recordings are likely to be separated children, and then to conduct more laborious manual reviews. Officials said the process would take "at least 12 months, or even 24 months".

A team of officials representing the Ministry of Health and Social Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement Control, and the Department of Customs and Border Protection would lead the effort, said the document. They would then convene a data analysis team led by an experienced biostatistician.

The news of the plan proposed by the government quickly aroused the opposition of the ACLU.

"We strongly oppose any plan that would give the government up to two years to find these children.The plan proposed by the government reflects the persistent refusal of the Administration to treat these separations with urgency that they deserve, "said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's immigrant. human rights and the lead counsel in his family separation case, in a statement to CNN. "We are talking about the lives of children, potentially thousands of them, and the government has been able to quickly mobilize resources to take these children away from their families and now it has to bring those resources together to repair the damage."

Last month, US District Judge Dana Sabraw issued a 14-page decision changing the group's definition following revelations that the government was separating families as of July 1, 2017, a few months before the July 1, 2017 deadline. announcement of the controversial "zero tolerance" immigration policy. Officials estimated that the children had been separated, received by HHS for treatment and released before the Sabraw court order on June 26, 2018, ordering the termination of most family separations at the US border.

The plaintiffs "ask the government to identify the families that it separated as of July 1, 2017 and whose children were released from the ORR before June 26, 2018," according to a court document dated last month. They note that the government should "start the process immediately". The government had proposed to submit a proposal on the next steps "no later than 5 April 2019."

Ms. L, et al. vs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al., Was initially caused by the separation of a Congolese woman and her 7-year-old daughter. The American Civil Liberties Union originally filed a lawsuit last year, which was later expanded to become a class action.

In June, Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction blocking most family separations on the US-Mexico border and ordering the government to reunite divided families.

Since then, the administration has regularly submitted to the court information on the reunification status of children and parents separated by the government, including relatives who have been deported but have finally chosen not to be reunited with their children. children.

As of March 25, 2019, the government had released 2,749 of the 2,814 possible children of potential members of the group, eight more than the March 6th status report.