Hundreds of parents deported without kids
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration told a federal court Tuesday that more than 450 migrant parents whose children were separated from them are no longer in the United States, raising questions about whether the parents fully understood that they were being deported without their children.
A report filed before a hearing in U.S. District Court in San Diego suggests that nearly one-fifth of 2,551 parents whose children were taken from them after crossing the southwest border were either swiftly deported before they could be reunited with their children or somehow opted to leave the country without them.
The number could change since the Justice Department in its filing states that the cases are “under review.” However, it is the first time the government has disclosed that hundreds of migrant families may now face formidable barriers of bureaucracy and distance that were unforeseen in the early stages of the government’s zero tolerance policy on border enforcement.
The government’s previous estimate of the number of such cases was just 12, though that applied only to parents of the youngest children.
“We are extremely worried that a large percentage of parents may already have been removed without their children,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is challenging the government’s handling of migrant children. He said further clarification is needed to understand just what has happened.
Some immigrant advocates said many migrant parents have agreed to be deported quickly with the understanding that it would speed up their ability to recover their children — perhaps not understanding that they would be leaving their children behind.
“Our attorney volunteers working with detained separated parents are seeing lots of people who signed forms that they didn’t understand,” said Taylor Levy, legal coordinator at Annunciation House in El Paso, which assists migrants.