Family reunifications may take U.S. months
Reuniting immigrant children separated from their parents seeking asylum could take up to four months, a federal official told Texas’ U.S. senators, Republicans John Cornyn and Ted Cruz, along with local leaders and others meeting at Border Patrol offices on the Texas-Mexico border Friday.
The senators traveled to the Rio Grande Valley for a round- table discussion with the local leadership of federal agencies dealing with immigration, area elected officials and religious
and nonprofit representatives. The senators also toured — and praised — a facility holding immigrant children.
During the roundtable, Dr. Ambrosio Hernandez, mayor of the nearby city of Pharr, pressed Jose Gonzales, field supervisor for the U.S. Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, about comments indicat- ing that it could take months to reconnect parents in federal custody with their children, in accordance with an executive action issued Wednesday by President Donald Trump.
“It depends,” Gonzales said. “There are some children we can release as soon as we’re able to communicate with the families and get the documents that we need . ... But there are some families that are going to take time,
because we need to verify, ‘This is Mom.’ It may take up to four months.”
Cornyn and Cruz did not immediately share a reaction to that time frame.
Trump’s order halted a recent practice of separating families entering the U.S. illegally, but it did not spell out a process for reuniting already-separated families. Under the administration’s zero tolerance policy toward illegal immigration, more than 2,300 children have been taken away from family and placed in shelters.
Awaiting reunions
Immigrant women detained at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center in Taylor, outside Austin, have been told nothing about when or if they will be reunited with their children, said Sofia Casini, immigration programs coordinator at Grassroots Leadership, an Austin-based civil and human rights nonprofit group.
“For some it’s urgent,” she said. “They’ve already failed their ‘credible fear’ interview ... and they can be deported any day without their children, so it’s urgent that we get answers to this question and that these mothers be released.”
Officials at Austin-based nonprofit Southwest Key Programs, which operates 16 shelters for immigrant children in Texas, said they also are in the dark about what comes next, having received no guidance as of Friday about how to reunite children who were separated from their parents, according to a spokesman for the organization.
Questions also remained about how Border Patrol is handling immigrants with children entering the country illegally. Manuel Padilla, chief of Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, said agents are still referring all misdemeanor illegal entry cases for prosecution.
“Right now, we’re looking at what we’re going to do,” he said. “Whatever we do, we’re going to keep the families together.”
Thursday, in McAllen, 17 people deemed heads of households had their misdemeanor illegal entry cases dismissed in federal court, according to area attorneys, but they already had been separated from their children.
Praise for facilities
Cornyn praised Southwest Key, which operates the shelter the senators toured, as “doing a good job.” When Roger Rocha, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens, raised concerns about alleged abuses in some facilities, Cornyn defended the facilities.
“We can’t believe all the rumors that are flying around,” he said.
Cruz asked whether it is true that human traffickers sometimes instruct children to call them their parents — a premise that has been used to justify not immediately giving children back to their parents.
Gonzales said those cases do happen, but are very rare.
Cruz touted a bill he has introduced that would require the Homeland Security Department to keep families together at detention centers until their immigration cases are resolved. It also calls for increasing the number of immigration judges and requires the Homeland Security Department to expedite court proceedings for children and families.
He criticized a proposal from U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., which would bar separating children from parents at the border in most cases, as legislation that would “mandate a policy of catch and release.”
Daniel Garza, president of the LIBRE Initiative, a limited-government Latino advocacy group, said he would like assurance there won’t be indefinite detention of families. Currently, a 1997 agreement allows the Homeland Security Department to detain children for only 20 days. Trump’s executive order asks Attorney General Jeff Sessions to seek a change to that. At the roundtable, U.S. Attorney Ryan Patrick said most cases that last longer than 20 days probably involve parents charged with a more serious crime than illegal entry.
Sister Norma Pimentel, a nun who for four years has run a McAllen shelter for immigrant families, urged the senators to consider alternatives to locking up families while their immigration claims are processed.
“There have been case management programs that have been successful,” she said. “There are humane alternatives to detention that move along the process.”
At a news conference after the roundtable, a reporter pressed Cruz on how people can be expected to request asylum legally when U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents have recently taken to turning people away on international bridges and telling them to come back later, saying the agency doesn’t have enough resources to process the claims immediately. Cruz was asked what decision he would make, if his children’s lives were at stake in a dangerous country.
Cruz said in response that his own Cuban father received political asylum properly.
“There’s a right way and a wrong way to come to America,” he said.
‘We can’t believe all the rumors that are flying around’ U.S. Sen. John Cornyn On allegations of abuses