Experts say some migrant kids may never reunite with parents

The 50 children now staying at Holy Family Institute in Emsworth after they were separated from their families at the southern border by the federal government are unlikely to be reunited with their families any time soon — or at all, Pittsburgh immigration attorneys said Friday.

“Legally, I don’t even know what that [legal situation of family reunification] would look like,” said Jamie Englert, director of immigration legal services with Jewish Family and Community Services in Squirrel Hill, which is involved in the children’s cases. “I can’t imagine the chaos that would create.

“The way [the law] is now, I don’t know how they could systematically be reunited to go through this process together.”

Chaos would result because if the federal government tried to put the kids back with their adult relatives who have been detained at the border, “that would be illegal” under the current law, even with President Donald Trump’s recently signed executive order, she said.

Under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy for illegal border crossers, all adults are immediately detained and are expected to eventually be charged with a federal misdemeanor or felony for illegally crossing. And that means their children — who are now in a legal process of placement and determining if they can stay in the country that is separate from their parents — can’t be returned to them until they are deported and maybe not even then.

“That’s the scary thing,” said Jacqueline Martinez, a Pittsburgh immigration attorney with her own firm who has been watching the case closely. “We are separating these kids from their families, and it may be permanent.”

Five experienced Pittsburgh immigration attorneys all said it could be years or even permanent, and this is why: