Federal judge orders Trump administration to reunite migrant families

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the federal government to reunite migrant parents with the children who were abducted as part of Trump 's family separation policy.

Dana Sabraw, District Court Judge of the United States, based in San Diego, issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday night, it is necessary that almost all children under 5 years are returned to their parents within 14 days and that older children are returned within 30 days.

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Sabraw said it was a "startling reality" that no proper planning had been done before officials embarked on a policy to separate children from parents on guard at school. view. or dismissed for criminal prosecution. This practice resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their parents or other family members.

"The government easily keeps track of the detainees' personal property in criminal and immigration proceedings," writes Sabraw in his 24-page order. "Money, important documents and automobiles, to name a few, are regularly cataloged, stored, tracked and produced at the release of an inmate, at all levels – State and federal, citizen and foreign. Yet, the government does not have a system in place to track, communicate effectively and produce foreign children quickly. The sad reality is that, in the current system, migrant children are not counted with the same efficiency and precision as property. Admittedly, this can not meet the requirements of due process. "

The injunction was issued following objections from the Trump administration, which had asked Sabraw to suspend the issuance of this warrant as the agencies were working to implement the Donald Trump presidential decree issued last week to repeal the policy of family separation.

The preliminary injunction also blocks expelled parents who have been separated from their children "unless the group member refuses affirmatively, knowingly and willingly to be reunited with the child prior to deportation. the member of the group or that it is determined that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child. "

A spokesman for the Justice Ministry declined to comment Tuesday night on the order of the judge.

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the Immigrants' Rights Project of the ACLU, pleaded the case. "This decision is a huge victory for parents and children who think they may never see each other again," he said Tuesday night. "Tears will flow into detention centers across the country when families learn that they will be reunited."

Sabraw, a person named by President George W. Bush, acted in response to a complaint from the American Civil Liberties Union filed in February on the alleged separation of a Republic asylum seeker. Democratic Republic of Congo of his 7-year-old child. They were reunited in March, but the ACLU added another complainant: a Brazilian woman who was separated from her 14-year-old son while she was being prosecuted for illegally crossing the border with Mexico.

The civil liberties group also asked the judge to treat the case as a class action on behalf of other migrants separated from their families. Sabraw accepted class action status in a separate decision Tuesday night.

In his ruling ordering family reunion, Sabraw declared that Trump administration's policy encroached on the constitutional right not to arbitrarily separate his family.

"The right to the integrity of the family always applies here," wrote the judge. "The context of the family separation practice here, an international boundary, does not make constitutional practice or protect it from judicial review."

Sabraw also said that the government has an affirmative duty to reunite parents with their children, not just to distribute free numbers that immigrants can call to try to locate their children, who are usually in the legal custody of the Ministry of Health. and the Man. Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR.

"These situations confirm what the government has already stated: it does not affirmatively assemble parents like plaintiffs and their classmates for purposes other than dismissal," writes the judge. "Apart from deportation, it is the responsibility of parents who, for the most part, are themselves in criminal or immigration proceedings, to contact the ORR or to search for their children and to submit an application for reunification. … However, this reunification procedure was not designed to cope with the current circumstances. "

The "zero tolerance" border strategy has generated widespread opposition in recent weeks. Trump issued a hastily drafted executive order on June 20 that sought to detain children indefinitely alongside their parents – a response to the fallout from the enforcement policy of his own administration.

The order immediately bumped into a tangle of logistical problems, including the settlement agreement reached in 1997 with Flores, which demands that children be released in the "least restrictive framework" and limit their detention to 20 days maximum.

The Justice Department last week asked for a change in the agreement that would allow it to hold children alongside their parents, but the Obama appointed judge overseeing the case should not process the application favorably. .

The administration is also facing a crisis of family detention space. As of June 20, more than three quarters of the 3,326 federal government family custody beds were filled.

US Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection Kevin McAleenan told reporters in south Texas on Monday, his agency would temporarily stop referring parents traveling with children for prosecution, except in cases where the adult had a criminal background or presented a danger to the child.

Secretary of Health and Social Services Alex Azar m said at a congressional hearing on Tuesday, parents held in immigration detention centers could not be reunited with their children unless they file an asylum application and accept to be deported or that the federal law be amended.