Advocates say U.S. still separates families at border
HOUSTON — Months after the Trump administration announced an end to its widescale separation of migrant parents and children, the policy remains a heated issue in the courts and at the border as critics contend the government is still needlessly breaking up immigrant families.
The Texas Civil Rights Project released a report Thursday that counts 272 separations at a single Texas courthouse since June, when President Trump issued an executive order ending widespread separations amid public outrage.
The bulk of those cases involve children who cross the U.S.-Mexico border with relatives other than their parents, such as grandparents, uncles and aunts, or adult siblings.
Thirty-eight cases involved a parent or legal guardian, the majority of whom had criminal convictions, the group said.
In a statement, U.S. Customs and Border Protection argued the group incorrectly categorized cases involving other relatives because the Homeland Security Act “does not make concessions for anyone other than a parent or legal guardian.” CBP includes the Border Patrol, which apprehends people entering the U.S. illegally.
The government and the American Civil Liberties Union were due back in court Thursday to discuss what might be thousands of children who were separated before a June court order requiring the speedy reunification of families.
The government has acknowledged taking more than 2,700 children from their families and has reunited most of them, but a watchdog report last month found that thousands of other children were separated and released before the order.
“What’s happening is the government is doing separations unilaterally without any process to contest the separations and without a child welfare expert overseeing the separations,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said.
One concern, Gelernt and others said, is the fate of children cared for by relatives in arrangements that were never formalized.
In one case discovered by the Texas Civil Rights Project, an 11-year-old boy from Guatemala was separated from his uncle, who was his caretaker because his father had not been involved in his life and his mother had died of cancer, said Efren Olivares, a lawyer for the project.