Family reunion policy unclear
assists immigrant children. ‘‘So it’s kind of an ad hoc process.’’
Each family member apprehended at the border is given an alien number by the Department of Homeland Security when they are taken into custody, but individuals’ numbers are not linked to other members of their family, said Jennifer Podkul, the group’s policy director.
Immigrants taken into detention usually stay from between a few hours to a couple of days in a temporary facility operated by the Border Patrol, where they are fingerprinted and held. The Border Patrol then typically turns them over to the marshals service, which takes the parents to a facility run by the Bureau of Prisons, where they spend several more days in custody before being taken to a court hearing where they typically plead guilty to illegal entry into the US, a misdemeanour, and are sentenced to time served.
Children, meanwhile, are often taken to any of more than 100 facilities scattered across the country that are overseen by HHS. Some have been held in facilities run by the Border Patrol.
Once the criminal proceeding is finished, adults are typically returned to the custody of Homeland Security, which can hold them until they are given a deportation hearing. Those who have an asylum claim, as many recent migrants do, can raise it at that point. In some cases, parents are given an option to accept deportation without a hearing, along with their children, and are sent back on the next flight.
McKenna said her group depends on individual clues to reunite families, including the location where the family crossed the border and the level of offence with which a parent is charged. In some cases, she said, children have remained in custody even after parents were deported, creating an additional challenge. –