US wants two years to identify migrant children separated from their families

The Trump administration wants up to two years to potentially find thousands of children separated from their families at the border before a judge ended the practice last year. This task is more laborious than previous efforts because children are no longer in prison. guard of the government.

The Justice Department said Friday in a court Friday that it would take at least a year to review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children placed in government custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25 2018 – the eve of the judgment of Judge Dana Sabraw of the US District the general practice of splitting families. The administration would begin by examining the names of the characters most likely to indicate separation – for example, children under 5 years of age.

The administration would provide information on separated families on an ongoing basis to the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit to reunite families and criticized the proposed timetable on Saturday.

"We are strongly opposed to a plan that could take up to two years to locate these families," said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's principal attorney. "The government must make it a priority."

Sabraw ordered last year that on June 26, 2018, more than 2,700 children in government care are reunited with their families, which is largely accomplished. Then, in January, the US Department of Health and Human Services' internal oversight body announced that thousands more children would have been separated since the summer of 2017. The Inspector General of the Department said the number exact was unknown.

Last month, the judge ruled that he could hold the government accountable for separated families before his June order and asked the government to submit a proposal for next steps. A hearing is scheduled for April 16.

Jonathan White, commander of the US Public Health Service and family reunification specialist, said in an affidavit Jonathan White that it was a simple volume, that it was different to identify children who were in custody at the time of the judge's order in June.

White, whose work has been praised by the judge, will lead efforts to identify new families on behalf of Health and Human Services and Social Services with their counterparts at Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs and Enforcement. Dr. Barry Graubard, a statistical expert at the National Cancer Institute, has developed a system to attract the attention of those most likely to be separated.

The vast majority of separated children are handed over to their loved ones, but many are not their parents. Of the children released during the 2017 fiscal year, 49% went to their parents, 41% to close relatives such as an aunt, uncle, grandparent or adult sibling and 10% to distant relatives, friends of the family and other people.

The model proposed by the government to report separated children places a higher priority on about half of the children who are not released. Other possible signs of separation include children under 5, younger children traveling without siblings, and those who have been detained in the Border Patrol area in El Paso, Texas, where they are not allowed to stay. administration set up a trial program that separated nearly 300 family members from July to November 2017

Saturday marks the anniversary of the government's "zero tolerance" policy to criminally prosecute any adult who enters the country illegally from Mexico. The administration was withdrawn in June in the midst of an international turmoil by generally exempting the adults who come with their children. The policy now applies only to single adults.