Judge orders US to reunite families separated at border within 30 days
US - US immigration agents can no longer separate immigrant parents and children caught crossing the border from Mexico illegally and must work to reunite those families that had been split up in custody, a federal judge has ruled.
The US district court judge Dana Sabraw on Tuesday granted the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed over family separations. Sabraw ordered US border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days, setting a deadline in a process that has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might again see their parents. The move which came after the supreme court’s ruling upholding the travel ban targeting Muslim-majority countries could open up a legal battle with the justice department which did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the multistate lawsuit. Sabraw, an appointee of President George W Bush, also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or does not want to be with the child. His ruling requires the government provide phone contact between parents and their children within 10 days. More than 2,300 migrant children were separated from their parents after the Trump administration began a zerotolerance policy in early May, seeking to prosecute all adults who crossed the border illegally, including those travelling with children. The ACLU had sued on behalf of a mother and her then six-year-old daughter, who were separated after arriving last November in the US to seek asylum and escape religious persecution in the Democratic Republic of Congo. While they were reunited in March, the ACLU is pursuing class-action claims on behalf of other immigrants. Meanwhile, the House of Representatives is set to vote on Wednesday on a immigration proposal designed as a compromise between moderate and conservative factions of the Republican caucus. The bill would provide $25bn for a wall on the Mexican border. It would also limit legal immigration, provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and end family separations.
(The Guardian)