Immigrant families reunited in Texas
Roger and his 4-year-old son Roger Jr., who were separated at the border in February, embrace Wednesday in El Paso after being reunited and released by immigration officials. Families also were reunited in San Antonio.
SAN ANTONIO — First came the child car seats. At least four were moved from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center into unmarked white vans.
Then, several families emerged from the ICE center in northeast San Antonio. Parents cradled some of the children in their arms; others toddled alongside the adults.
With the families on board, the unmarked white vans headed to the offices of San Antonio Catholic Charities about 10 miles away.
The Trump administration’s effort to comply with a court order to reunite children under age 5 with their immigrant parents continued to be conducted behind a curtain of secrecy Wednesday. The government processed families behind high security fences, transported them in unmarked vans and instructed its subcontractors to rebuff media inquiries.
The children spotted at the ICE facility by Express-News reporters are believed to be among 102 whom the Trump administration had agreed to return to their parents by the end of the day Tuesday, a deadline imposed by a federal judge in San Diego.
The government was unable to comply fully: Only 38 of the youngsters were reunited with their parents Tuesday, according to federal officials.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who imposed the deadline, has asked for a status report on the reunification effort Thursday afternoon. The judge has also asked the American Civil Liberties Union, the plaintiff in the suit against the Trump
administration, to propose ways to punish the government for its failure. The sanctions could include fines or a contempt of court finding against government officials.
The parties are scheduled to meet in Sabraw’s courtroom Friday.
“What we are pleased with is that the judge has made clear he is going to stay on top of the government, hold as many hearings as he needs to, require as many status reports as he needs to,” Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s national Immigrants’ Rights Project, told PBS News Hour. “And that’s ultimately, I think, what is going to be critical in getting this process done.”
‘Zero tolerance’ rule halted
Tuesday’s deadline applied only to children under the age of 5. Sabraw has set a July 26 deadline for reuniting older children with their parents. Federal officials have estimated that as many as 3,000 children are in government custody after being taken from immigrants who entered the country without authorization.
Federal agents began separating families under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of arresting all undocumented immigrants at the border and prosecuting them for illegal entry. Their children then became “unaccompanied minors” and placed in the government’s care. The flood of children overwhelmed the federal shelter system to the point that a tent city was hurriedly erected in Tornillo, outside El Paso, and preparations were made to house thousands of additional immigrants at military bases in Texas.
Under intense criticism, including from Republican leaders, Trump signed an executive order last month halting family separations. The government then committed to reuniting parents and children.
No update
Some of the separated children have been housed in San Antonio at shelters run by charitable organizations under contract with the government. At least 22 have been or at St. PJ’s Children’s Home, operated by Catholic Charities. The parents of some of those children have been held at the South Texas Detention Center in Pearsall, about 55 miles southwest of San Antonio. Also in South Texas are two of the country’s largest immigrant detention centers, in Dilley and Karnes City.
On Wednesday, a day after the court-imposed deadline, Sara Ramey, executive director of the San Antonio-based Migrant Center for Human Rights, drove to Pearsall to see if her two clients had been released and reunited with their children.
But Josefina Ortiz Corrales, who has a 4-year-old son, and an unidentified mother, who has a 3-year-old son, were still there.
“I’m waiting to hear why they’re not being reunified with their children under the court order,” Ramey said by phone from Pearsall.
“Honestly, if ICE has any concerns about flight risk, which I don’t think are concerns, they can release them with supervision or ankle monitor. So I don’t see any reason for either of them to be here at this point,” she said.
The other mother has been apart from her child for more than two months, Corrales for more than six months.
Both mothers had entered the U.S. and been given deportation orders before. But this time around, both had presented themselves at a bridge along the border, a legal port of entry, Ramey said. And Ramey said that both cleared the first stage to become eligible for asylum — an interview to show that they have a “credible fear” of persecution if returned to their home countries.
Ramey said ICE officials were unhelpful when she asked why the mothers were still in detention.
“They had no update for me. The officer just said, ‘I’m leaving for the day and I don’t have any update,’” she said.
‘Changed my life’
As the days tick by, Corrales, 51, says detention is hard to endure.
“I’m dying little by little in this place,” she said in a telephone interview with the ExpressNews.
After months of no contact with her son, she managed to speak with him several weeks ago. But she said what she heard filled her with despair.
“It’s hard for me to talk to him on the phone because he gets mad at me,” she said, sobbing. “He asks if I don’t want to be his mother anymore.”
“I’m scared. This has completely changed my life,” Corrales said. “I never imagined that, at my age, I would go through a nightmare as big as this.”