Immigrants await word on when they will be reunited

MCALLEN, TEXAS — Two days after President Donald Trump ordered an end to the separation of families at the border, federal authorities Friday were still working on a plan to reunite an estimated 1,800 children with their parents and keep immigrant households together.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a notice saying it is looking into creating 15,000 beds for use in detaining immigrant families. A day earlier, the Pentagon said it was drawing up plans to house as many as 20,000 migrants on U.S. military bases.

Beyond that, however, there were few signs of any relief for parents separated from their children and placed in detention centers for illegally entering the country over the past several weeks.

Some locked-up parents struggled to get in touch with children being held in many cases hundreds of miles away, in places like New York and the Chicago area. Some said they didn’t even know where their children were.

Trump himself took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling “phony stories of sadness and grief.”

“We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants,” he tweeted.

Trump’s decision to stop separating families, announced Wednesday after a fierce international outcry, has led to confusion and uncertainty along the border.

Federal agencies are working to set up a centralized reunification process for all remaining children at a detention center on the Texas side of the border, said the senior administration official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

In the meantime, federal authorities appear to be easing up on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all adults caught illegally entering the U.S. — though the Justice Department flatly denied there has been any change.

The federal public defender’s office for the region that covers El Paso to San Antonio said in an email made public Thursday that federal prosecutors will no longer charge parents with illegally entering the U.S. if they have children with them.

Outside the federal courthouse in McAllen, immigration attorney Efren Olivares said 67 people were charged Friday morning with illegal entry, but none were parents with children.

He said it was the first time since May 24 that no parents separated from their children had been charged in McAllen.

“It appears that this is a consequence of a change in policy by the government,” he said.

ICE has only three facilities nationwide — two main ones in Texas — that can be used to detain immigrant families, and they have a combined 3,300 beds.

The facility in Dilley, Texas, opened in 2015 on a remote site that was once an encampment for oil workers. It contains collections of cottages built around playgrounds and common areas, but also has high security.