Pa. joins states that plan to sue over family separations
SEATAC, Wash. — Pennsylvania, Washington and at least nine other states are planning to sue the Trump administration over its separation of immigrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, saying the president’s executive order halting the practice is riddled with caveats and fails to reunite parents and children who have already been torn apart.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson made the announcement Thursday outside a federal prison in the city of SeaTac, south of Seattle, where about 200 immigration detainees had been transferred.
They include dozens of women separated from their children under the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all migrants caught illegally entering the country.
“This is a rogue, cruel and unconstitutional policy,” Mr. Ferguson said.“We’re going to put a stop to it.”
Immigration authorities have separated about 2,300 children from their parents under the policy over the past several weeks, prompting global outrage as images and recordings of weeping
children emerged.
After falsely blaming Democrats for the separations and insisting that only Congress could fix it, President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued an executive order designed to end the practice.
The order does nothing to reunite those already separated and might require families to remain in custody together longer than allowed under legal precedent, Mr. Inslee and Mr. Ferguson said. Both Democrats, they accused the administration of denying the parents and children due process; denying the immigrants, many of whom are fleeing gang threats and violence in Central America, their right to seek asylum; and being arbitrary in the application of the policy.
Confusion reigned Thursday about whether the administration intended to continue criminally prosecuting all illegal border crossers.
Mr. Trump did not directly answer a question to that effect, instead saying: “We have to be very, very strong on the border. If we don’t do it, you will be inundated with people and you really won’t have a country.”
The widespread uncertainty about what comes next also spread to Homeland Security. One senior DHS official acknowledged that Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which operates two large family detention centers in Texas and a smaller facility in Pennsylvania — has almost no ability to add detention capacity for families because its jails are already full.
The uncertainty is part of the reason legal action remains necessary, Mr. Inslee and Mr. Ferguson said.
“No one knows what this administration is doing today because they don’t know what they’re doing today,” Mr. Inslee said. “These people could not run a two-car funeral.”
Mr. Ferguson has filed more than two dozen lawsuits against the Trump administration, most notably he successfully sued to block Mr. Trump’s initial travel ban against several mostly Muslim countries.
He had planned to sue over the family separations in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Thursday, but his office had to rework the complaint after the executive order was issued. It was expected to be filed within a few business days.
Mr. Ferguson said that in addition to Pennsylvania, California, Illinois, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maryland, Minnesota, New Mexico and Oregon would join the lawsuit. New York announced a separate challenge.
“Children belong with their families, not alone and fearful in metal cages,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a written statement. “We are filing this lawsuit because ripping children from their parents is unlawful, wrong and heartless.”
A U.S. judge in San Diego is already considering whether to issue a nationwide injunction sought by the American Civil Liberties Union that would order the administration to reunite the separated children with their parents.
Mr. Ferguson said his legal team spent much of Wednesday interviewing women who remain in custody after being separated from their children. Some still haven’t spoken with their children or don’t know where they are.
About 35 of the mothers were transferred this week to the Northwest Detention Center, a privately run immigration jail in Tacoma.
In addition, Mr. Ferguson said, his office has so far identified nine children who have been placed in transitional housing in Washington. The state suspects there are more whom officials don’t yet know about.
Also at least two Pennsylvania facilities are housing immigrant children separated from their families at the border under Mr. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy.
About 50 children have been sent to the Holy Family Institute in Emsworth since April.
Facility CEO Sister Linda Yankoski confirmed the institute is housing the children and has also housed unaccompanied minors since 2010. It has a contract with the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement.
WHYY radio reports at least nine children have been sent to a shelter in the Lehigh Valley. Elizabeth Yaeger, supervising attorney for HIAS Pennsylvania’s Immigrant Youth Advocacy Project, said she could not disclose the exact location.