The Trump administration misses the deadline to bring together separated children with their parents

The Trump administration failed on Tuesday its first court-ordered deadline for reuniting separated families at the border as it rushes to confirm the parents' identities and match records disparate agencies involved.

A federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to reunite all children under the age of five by July 10, but as of Wednesday, only four clusters were confirmed.

Government lawyers and government officials said that of the 102 children under five who had been separated, 38 were to be reunited by Tuesday. But on Wednesday night, an administration official told ABC News that they expected that as early as the morning of July 12, they would gather all children under the age of 5 eligible under the ordinance. reunification with parents in the United States. .

At a hearing Tuesday, the judge acknowledged that not 102 of these very young children could be immediately sent back to their parents – because some parents were deported without their children or had a possible criminal history, by example – but told the government that they must reunify 59 children.

A federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in February to reunite a Congolese mother seeking asylum with her daughter has been extended to a class action lawsuit after the department of Justice has put in place its "zero tolerance". "The policy of prosecuting all illegal border workers.

In June, the judge ruled that children forcibly separated by US authorities at the border had to be reunited, setting a timetable for full reunification by July 26, 2018.

"These are firm deadlines and not ambitious goals," Judge Dana Sabraw said at a hearing on Tuesday.

Colleen Long / AP

Children waiting for reunification

The Department of Health and Social Services (HHS) has determined that only 75 of 102 children under five are eligible for reunification. Seventeen reunifications were pending DNA test results and there was a three-year-old child for whom the government said that he had no information about parents.

The government now thinks that the child may have American citizen parents and that he has been placed in the wrong system.

Twenty-seven children are not eligible for reunification because of their criminal history, pending criminal custody, or other disqualifying factors.

"The court could not say more clearly that the cases are not acceptable," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project. "The Trump administration has to reunite these children and their parents."

The administration argued that it was striving to meet the deadline set by the courts and that the delays were necessary to ensure the safety and well-being of the children they were responsible for. charge.

"Our process may not be as fast as some would like, but there is no doubt that it protects children," said Chris Meekins, chief of staff at the office of the deputy secretary at the preparation and intervention. What we want is that a child be placed in a dangerous situation due to a lack of scrutiny from us. "

HHS is responsible for the care of approximately 11,800 unaccompanied minors who entered the United States illegally, including 2,000 to 3,000 "unaccompanied" children who were separated from their parents by the US authorities.

Parents in detention

Most of the parents who were separated under the police were placed under the custody of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over the past two weeks, ICE has held adults in geographic areas near shelters where children were staying to facilitate the process, "said the deputy executive director of kidnapping operations and Ice removal, Matthew Albence.

"Parents of children under the age of 5 are reunited with their children and then released and enrolled in an alternative detention program, which means that they will be placed on an anklet and released in the community ".

These family reunions were to take place in the corridors of undisclosed CIE detention centers and be released into the community, according to an official of the administration.

Meanwhile, the zero tolerance policy of the administration remains in limbo and has been dismantled at least temporarily in practice.

On June 20, after weeks of public outrage over family separation, President Trump signed a decree aimed at both keeping families together and prosecuting people who cross the border illegally.

Less than a week later, the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) declared that she had suspended referrals to the prosecution until they found how to maintain the families together during the prosecution process.

"We must put an end to the challenge of capture and release.A much better system would be to keep families together through their immigration procedures." that the Obama administration did in 2014, that's what the president asked Congress to help us do now, "said CBP Commissioner Kevin Medaan at ABC News.

The actions of the administration have created what could become dual court requirements if the zero tolerance policy continues. On the one hand, the San Diego federal judge had ordered the reunification of families. On the other hand, another California federal judge confirmed Monday a decades-old court agreement, known as the Flores settlement, which requires that children be released from immigration detention after 20 days .

Eric Gay / AP

How did we get here

In early May, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began implementing the zero tolerance policy, and family separations began to skyrocket.

"If you smuggle a child, we will prosecute you and this child will be separated from you as required by law," said Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May at the announcement of politics.

About 2,300 children were separated from their parents from June 5 to 9 because of zero tolerance, according to DHS officials.

By way of comparison, there were only 1,768 cases of family separation by border officials from October 2016 to February 2018.

However, at the height of the zero tolerance policy, only 53% of illegal border crossings were returned by CBP to the Justice Department for prosecution, according to an administration official.

Of these initial separations, about 500 children were reunited with their parents while they were still in CBP custody, and before being treated at HHS and eventually sent to shelters at thousands kilometers.

HHS officials have not confirmed the number of children in their care because of the "zero tolerance" policy.

In order to comply with the court order, HHS had to check all of his records to determine which children were separated from a parent, concluding that there was "less than 3,000" potentially separated children in his custody.

However, last month, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told Congress that he "could, in a matter of seconds, find a child for our care for any parent".

Congressional Democrats on Wednesday called on Judicial Council Chairman Chuck Grassley to hold a monitoring commission raising questions over Azar's contradictory statements regarding the number of children in his custody, including the lack of plan to reunite them with their parents.

This is their third Grassley application for a committee hearing, claiming that the Trump Administration's zero tolerance policy has resulted in "the traumatic separation of children from their parents".

Grassley has already shot down these demands.
"The simplest and easiest way to resolve this crisis is to repeal the Flores decision so that family units can remain in family residential centers and receive adequate care while awaiting the outcome of their business. criminal or civil ". "It's a simple and logical solution that does not require an audience."

Mariam Khan of ABC contributed to this story.