Judge works to restore ‘sacred bond’ for split families
SAN DIEGO — U.S. District Judge Dana Saborder. braw appeared conflicted in early May on whether to stop families from being separated at the He challenged the Trump administration to explain how families were getting a fair hearing guaranteed by the Constitution, but also expressed reluctance to get too deeply involved with immigration enforcement.
“There are so many (enforcement) decisions that have to be made, and each one is individual,” he said in his calm, almost monotone voice. “How can the court issue such a blanket, overarching order telling the attorney general, either release or detain (families) together?”
Sabraw showed how more than seven weeks later in a blistering opinion faulting the administration and its “zero tolerance” policy for a “crisis” of its own making. He went well beyond the American Civil Liberties Union’s initial request to halt family separation — which President Trump effectively did on his own amid a backlash — by imposing a deadline of this Thursday to reunify more than 2,500 children with their families.
Unyielding insistence on meeting his deadline, displayed in a string of hearings, has made the San Diego jurist a central figure in a drama that has captivated international audiences with emotional accounts of toddlers and teens being torn from their parents.
Circumstances changed dramatically after the ACLU sued the government in March on behalf of a Congolese woman and a Brazilian woman who were split from their children. Three days after the May hearing, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the zero tolerance policy on illegal entry was in full effect, leading to the separation of more than 2,300 children in five weeks.
Sabraw, writing in early June that the case could move forward, found the practice “arbitrarily tears at the sacred bond between parent and child.” It was “brutal, offensive, and fails to comport with traditional notions of fair play and decency.”
Sabraw, 60, was born in San Rafael, and raised in the Sacramento area. His father was stationed in Japan during the Korean War, where he met his mother. Republican President George W. Bush appointed Sabraw to the federal bench in 2003.