Estimate of children separated from their parents upped to 3,000
Officials say new numbers reflect reports from different immigration agencies
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration said Thursday that it had separated hundreds more children from their parents after illegal border crossings than had previously been revealed and that none of the families had yet been reunited.
About 100 of the children are younger than 5, Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, whose agency has custody of the children, told reporters on a conference call. The total number of children taken from their parents may be as high as nearly 3,000, he said. Previously, Azar and department officials had set the number at just more than 2,000.
Azar said the new numbers reflected reports from different immigration agencies and a review by hand by himself and others of case files of about 11,800 immigrant children in the agency’s care. About 80 percent of those children arrived at the border without parents; most are teenage boys.
Azar sharply objected to court orders that have directed the government to reunite families and have limited how long officials can hold children in immigrant detention. He warned that families may remain in the custody of immigration authorities for long periods, including those claiming asylum.
“As broken as our immigration system is, we still want to treat people as well as humanly possible going through this very difficult situation,” he said.
Federal District Judge Dana M. Sabraw in San Diego has given the government until Tuesday to reunite children younger than 5 with their parents. The judge gave the administration until about the end of the month to reunite all families.
“Under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,” the judge wrote last month. “Certainly, that cannot satisfy the requirements of due process.”
The parents mostly have raised claims for legal asylum in the United States. Buena Ventura Martin-godinez holds her son, Pedro Alessandro Godinez Martin, left, while talking to the press about unification with her daughter, Janne Godinez Martinez, 7, right, after being separated at the border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy on July 2 in Homestead, Florida.
President Donald Trump has ordered that they be kept locked up while their cases wend their way through immigration courts, a process that often can take months or years.
Until recently, adults with credible asylum claims were typically released, often with ankle bracelets or other electronic monitoring systems, and allowed to live in the U.S. until their hearing date.
The new data are the most specific to come from Health and Human Services as the administration
has struggled to come up with a plan to reunite families. Azar has said the only way parents can quickly be reunited with their children is to drop their claims for asylum in the United States and agree to be deported.
The separations stem from the “zero-tolerance” immigration policy that the administration began fully implementing in early May. Under the policy, officials said they would hold all adults who crossed the border illegally and charge them with misdemeanors.
At least 22 people were killed and 40 injured Thursday when explosions ripped through several fireworks factories in a Mexican town that has a long history of deadly blasts.
The explosions occurred in Tultepec, a town in Mexico state known as the country’s pyrotechnic capital and the site of a blast that claimed 42 lives in 2016. Several manufacturers were killed Thursday, authorities said, along with at least four firefighters and two police officers who rushed to the scene to help.
In a rare step, a state official vowed to review the town’s fireworks industry to determine whether a temporary closure of some factories was necessary.
Alejandro Ozuna Rivero, a top Mexico state official, told Reforma newspaper that the state would conduct an “exhaustive review of all permits and the way they are being granted.”
Deadly explosions occur with regularity in Tultepec, where many residents earn a living fabricating and selling fireworks, an essential part of holiday celebrations in Mexico and across Latin America. In June, seven people were killed in an explosion in the town. The 2016 blast resulted in a massive fire in the town’s main fireworks market. Similar fires engulfed the same market in 2005 and 2006.
The deadly incidents have generated repeated calls for the market to be closed and the area’s fireworks industry to be more heavily regulated. But after the 2016 disaster, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto instead pledged to rebuild the market, this time with new safety measures in place.
A group of poachers were bested by a pride of lions after they broke into a South African game reserve in a bid to stalk and slaughter a herd of rhinos.
At least three men made their way onto the Sibuya Game Reserve in the early hours of the morning on Monday. They were “armed with, amongst other things, a high powered rifle with a silencer, an ax, wire cutters and had food supplies for a number of days,” according to a press release.
Reserve owner Nick Fox said they had “all the hallmarks of a gang intent on killing rhino and removing their horns.”
An anti-poaching dog alerted its handler around 4:30 a.m. Monday, but the handler brushed off concerns. At the same time he’d heard a commotion coming from the lions, so he suspected that’s what prompted a reaction from the dog.
“However, it now appears likely that the dog had been alerted by something else out of the ordinary coming from the lions,” Fox said.
Field guides on a game drive Tuesday evening reported that they’d discovered human remains as well as other items “in the immediate vicinity of the lions.”
When he arrived on the scene, Fox said they discovered the high powered rifle, gloves, wire cutters and the remains of a back pack with food and water.
“Clearly the poachers had walked into a pride of six lions and some, if not all had been killed,” Fox said.
– Appeal-democrat news services