1,820 children reunited; hundreds still separated

SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration said Thursday more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border have been reunited with parents and sponsors, but hundreds remain apart, signaling a potentially arduous task ahead as it deals with the fallout of its “zero tolerance” policy on people entering the U.S. illegally.

There have been 1,442 children 5 and older reunified with their parents in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and 378 others who were released “in other appropriate circumstances,” including to other sponsors, the Justice Department said in a court filing.

Still, more than 700 parents were deemed not eligible or currently not eligible, many of whom may have been deported. Of those, 431 children have parents outside the United States.

More than 2,500 children were separated from their parents at the border in the past several months amid a zero tolerance policy that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing illegally.

Some children who had not seen their parents in weeks or months seemed slow to accept that they would not be abandoned again. One father who was reunited last week said his young daughter did not believe that he would not leave her a second time.

“I think that some of the children very quickly attach. Others, there’s a distance. There’s this caution, this lack of certitude, and part of it is not understanding what happened,” said Ruben Garcia, director of the Annunciation House, an immigrant assistance center in El Paso that has received about 25 families each day this week.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who represents the separated families, said before the latest figures were announced that the government should not be congratulating itself for meeting its “self-defined” deadline.

“The government shouldn’t be proud of the work they’re doing on reunification,” he said. “It should just be, ‘We created this cruel, inhumane policy … now we’re trying to fix it in every way we can and make these families whole.”

The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog said it would review the separation of families, along with the conditions at Border Protection facilities where migrant children are held, in response to scores of congressional requests to do so.

For the last two weeks, children have been arriving steadily at ICE locations in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico to be reunited with parents. Faith-based and other groups have provided meals, clothing, legal advice and plane and bus tickets.