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LOS FRESNOS, Tex. – It was not clear whether Central American parents would be reunited with their children Sunday at the Port Isabel detention center, despite a statement from the Trump administration on Saturday that the process was starting.
Lawyers interviewed outside locked doors described desperate parents abandoning their hopes of asylum to get their children back in their arms more quickly. They also said that the installation of Port Isabel – where the government said that families would be reunited and then evicted – is not intended to accommodate minors.
"It's the most ineffective and absurd system I've ever come across," said Sirine Shebaya, a civil rights lawyer from the Washington area who had traveled to southern Texas with a team that interviewed at least 150 parents detained since Friday.
"We have people who are considering not continuing with really strong asylum applications because they think they will find their children more quickly if they abandon their claim," he said. Shebaya. "It's just wrong."
The Trump administration announced Saturday night that it was taking steps to reunite 2,053 "separated minors" with their parents. The children were detained as part of the Trump border crackdown after the government chose to criminally prosecute all captured adults crossing the border.
Parents – many of whom say that they are seeking asylum and fleeing gang violence or domestic violence – have generally pleaded guilty to illegally entering the country and have been transferred to immigration jails for adults waiting for deportation. Their children, meanwhile, are sent throughout the country to shelters managed by the Department of Health and Social Services, or placed by the federal agency in foster care.
The entrance to the Port Isabel detention center of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Fresnos, Texas, where the Trump administration says that parents and children who have been separated at the border in recent weeks will be gathered in the coming days. (Maria Sacchetti / The Washington Post)
[[[[Trump says undocumented immigrants should not be entitled to due process]
The government said on Saturday that 522 migrant children have been returned to their parents, and that mothers and fathers separated from their children and threatened with deportation may request that their children be sent home with them.
"The US government knows the location of all the children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families," the Saturday night statement said. "This process is well coordinated."
Shebaya said that no one she spoke to Sunday was told that they would see their child that day. The remote facility of 1,200 people, surrounded by a wind farm, a wildlife refuge and miles of empty meadows where coyotes, hawks and snakes trail, "seems to be in full capacity ", did she say. "It's also not equipped to hold children."
"This kind of asks the question," where will they put the kids? "
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) Arrived at the facility in the evening, followed by a large bus with mirrored windows and an SUV carrying some of the city's lawyers. who had spoken with detainees earlier in the day. It was not immediately clear if the children were on the bus.
Ms. Shebaya said earlier that most of the migrants she had interviewed were following an "accelerated" expulsion process for recent border workers, who only delayed them if they express a fear. for their lives. Such a statement triggers an interview to see if they have a valid asylum claim. If they do, they could have an audience. If they do not, they could be deported, with limited opportunities to appeal this decision.
Eileen Blessinger, a Virginia immigration lawyer, estimated that 25% of the approximately 100 parents she and two colleagues interviewed in Port Isabel had been able to talk to their children on Sunday afternoon.
Some parents had children with special needs that they had not heard about for weeks, including a woman who said she had not heard of her deaf and dumb child. When a woman finally heard about her 7 year old child, the child said, "You do not love me, you left me," said the mother to Blessinger.
A detained father said during a telephone interview inside Port Isabel that he had not spoken to his 13-year-old daughter since their separation almost two weeks ago. "I do not know where she is, if she eats, if she is scared," said the 37-year-old, who asked for his middle name, Roel, because he had been threatened with death in Honduras . "All parents here are so worried."
"She is the only child I have," he said. "I've cried several times here, many times."
Sophia Gregg, another Washington-area immigration lawyer who works in Port Isabel, said the group had spoken to parents who had experienced a horrific trauma en route to the United States, but that ## 147 ## They were trying to locate their children.
"We have heard stories of detained women enslaved in cartel houses," she said. "And it's secondary to that that they do not know where their child is."
Natasha Quiroga, another lawyer in the group, said that a father who had not spoken to his daughter for more than a month had become so desperate that he wrote him a letter. , telling him to self-deport.
A mother who said that she had fled the threats of drug traffickers in Honduras gave Blessinger a letter to give to his 7 year old boy, with whom she had not spoken since they were separated two weeks ago. the manuscript The letter is addressed to "My reason for my life"."Be strong and fight, do not be sad," he says. and they will never separate us again"
[On U.S.-Mexico border, ‘zero-tolerance’ meets desperation]
Ruby Powers, a Houston immigration lawyer, said that one of her Honduran clients in a private CIE facility in Livingston, Texas, was not allowed to talk to her six-year-old daughter for three weeks.
It was only after signing a request for voluntary withdrawal that he was allowed to talk to the child, who was suffering from asthma and was being detained in a center of 39, home in Arizona. Powers, who now try to cancel his request, said the 24-year-old father had fled violence in Honduras, where his cousin had been killed.
The Saturday evening statement, jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the HHS, states that ICE will set up a tracking system for separated family members and reunite them before their expulsion as a unit. Parents will begin to receive more information about the whereabouts of their children, and telephone operators will provide more frequent communication.
"There will be a small number of children who have been separated for reasons other than zero tolerance who will remain separated," the statement said. "Generally only if the family relationship can not be confirmed, we believe that the adult is a threat to the safety of the child, or the adult is a criminal alien."
In El Paso, a DHS bus stopped in front of Casa Vides, a migrant shelter, on Sunday afternoon, and released about 30 people who had been detained for immigration offenses until the end of the day. that charges be dropped Thursday and Friday. Migrants will have access to legal aid, focusing on finding their children, said Ruben Garcia, executive director of Annunciation House, the non-profit organization that runs the shelter .
They are free on their own engagement as their immigration court proceedings continue, and some will likely carry ankle monitors. We still do not know how the reunification process announced by the federal government on Saturday night will be implemented for this group. Garcia said that he had been told that parents had to call an 800 number that the government provided in recent days. Taylor Levy, the group's director of legal services, said that if people passed, they would be told that someone would come back to them a few days later.
Garcia and Levy said the reunification process is further clouded by a new agreement that calls for the Refugee Resettlement Office, which looks after minors apprehended at the border and tries to place them, to share information with ICE and Customs and Border Protection. Anyone looking to entrust the care of a child to the ORR must agree to submit fingerprints of all adults from the home to ICE, a frightening prospect for many undocumented immigrants.
Levy criticized President Trump for his tweet earlier Sunday that said when someone arrives at the border, they should be deported immediately without legal process.
"This is not what our country represents," she said. "These people are fleeing for their lives, they are refugees, they are not economic migrants.The vast majority of them come here because they have no other choice and they want to survive, and they want their children to survive, and they have all the rights, under US laws and international treaties, to defend themselves and to get the trial they deserve. "
Sacchetti reported from Port Isabel. Moore reported from El Paso.
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