Judge praises reunions, raps U.S. for ‘losing’ kin

SAN DIEGO — A federal judge commended President Donald Trump’s administration Friday for reunifying families with their children after they were separated at the Mexico border but also warned that a better system must be put in place because hundreds of families have yet to be reunited.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said the government gets “great credit” after reunifying more than 1,800 children 5 and over with parents or sponsors by Thursday’s court-imposed deadline.

He pointed out that many of the families were reunited while in custody, then turned his attention to 431 children whose parents have been deported.

“The government is at fault for losing several hundred parents in the process and that’s where we go next,” the judge said.

Sabraw, an appointee of

Republican President George W. Bush, ordered the government and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the parents, to submit written updates every Thursday on still-separated families.

The order signaled slightly looser oversight than Sabraw imposed last month with frequent hearings to make sure his deadline was met.

In late June, the judge gave the government 14 days to reunify children under 5 and 30 days to reunite children 5 and older with their families.

Sabraw said the “problem” could not be repeated, describing how the Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, and Justice departments didn’t have a system to keep track of the families that were separated when the administration introduced a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal entry.

“Each [department] was like its own stovepipe, each had its own boss, and they did not communicate,” he said. “What was lost in the process was the family.”

Sabraw didn’t rule immediately on a request by the ACLU to give parents a week to decide whether to seek asylum after the group is notified that the family is reunited. As a result, a temporary halt on deportations remained in place.

Earlier Friday, Homeland Security officials said they had reunified all eligible parents with children — but noted many others were not eligible because they had been released from immigration custody, are in their home countries or chose not to be reunited.

More than 1,800 children 5 and older had been reunited with parents or sponsors as of Thursday. That included 1,442 children who were returned to parents who were in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and another 378 who were released under a variety of other circumstances.

On a parallel legal front, a federal judge in Los Angeles said Friday that she will appoint an independent monitor to evaluate conditions for migrant children in U.S. border facilities in Texas after a spate of reports of spoiled food, insufficient water and frigid conditions faced by the youngsters and their parents.

Judge Dolly Gee said she reached her decision after seeing a “disconnect” between U.S. government monitors’ assessment of conditions in facilities in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and the accounts of more than 200 children and their parents detailing numerous problems.

“It seems like there continue to be persistent problems,” she said during a hearing on a long-standing settlement in a case focusing on the care of children in government custody. “I need to appoint an independent monitor to give me an objective viewpoint about what is going on at the facilities.”

Peter Schey, an attorney who represents the children detained by the government, said problems have worsened with children now spending three to six days in U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities, where they were previously held one to three days.

“We’ve seen an intensification with all the chaos the administration has caused,” said Schey, who has long requested an independent monitor.

Sarah Fabian, a Justice Department attorney, opposed the appointment without having an opportunity to respond to the accounts of children and parents collected by immigrant advocates at facilities in June and July.

She said border authorities, for example, provide water fountains and jugs in cells and that facility conditions must comply with agency policies.

“We believe we haven’t had a chance for a full evidentiary hearing on this,” Fabian said.

Both sides have until Aug. 10 to agree on a proposed monitor. If they can’t, each will make suggestions to the judge and she will choose one.

The federal government was supposed to reunify more than 2,500 children who were separated from their parents under the policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally.

Trump ended the practice of taking children from parents and Sabraw ordered the government to reunite all the families by Thursday, but said there would be some flexibility given the enormity of the task.

In most cases, the families are released and parents typically get ankle-monitoring bracelets and court dates to appear before an immigration judge.

Faith-based and other groups have provided meals, clothing, legal advice, plane and bus tickets, and even new shoelaces for both parents and children.

One such group, Annunciation House in El Paso, has received more than 320 families since July 17, many of them being there for less than a day before they’re flown out to their intended destinations.

Separately, claims by a U.S. ethics watchdog that the Department of Homeland

Security and other agencies may have lost or destroyed files relating to the separation of children and families have triggered a government investigation into the proper retention of records.

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration started the investigation after receiving a July 6 complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which cited a New York Times report about the loss of records, the watchdog said Thursday in a statement.

The Washington-based archival agency on July 10 asked Customs and Border Protection, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the Department of Health and Human Services, to respond to the allegations within 30 days, according to a copy of the letter shared by the ethics group.

The New York Times article cited two unidentified Homeland Security officials saying that records “linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed” and “leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members,” according to the ethics group’s statement.

The National Archives is responsible for federal records management and regularly conducts inspections and other oversight activities.