Children staying in Noank shelter expected to reunite with parents
The parents of two immigrant children who have been staying in a Noank shelter will get parole and were expected to be reunited with their children Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle L. McConaghy said in a court document.
The children — a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador identified as V.F.B. and a 9-year-old boy from Honduras identified as J.S.R. — were separated from their parents earlier this year under a now-defunct Trump administration policy.
Until President Donald Trump issued an executive order stopping the policy, officials were jailing every adult caught illegally crossing the border or trying to do so, both misdemeanors. Officials sent accompanying children to warehouses or smaller shelters like the 12-bed place run by Noank Community Support Services, the only nonprofit in Connecticut that receives “unaccompanied alien children” under a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services program.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he implemented the policy in reaction to a 203 percent increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018.
Both children are plaintiffs in a suit against Sessions, which called on the government to immediately reunite J.S.R. with his father, J.S.G., and V.F.B. with her mother, A.D.B.A., outside of custody.
Judge Victor A. Bolden heard the case July 11 in the U.S. District Court in Bridgeport and on July 13 said it was unconstitutional for the government to forcibly separate families.
Bolden didn’t rule on the timing of the reunification — the parents already were to be reunited with their children by July 26 under a California court ruling — but he did order the government to bring each parent to court Wednesday for a scheduled status hearing.
It’s not clear whether that hearing still will happen.
McConaghy’s Monday filing said Immigrations and Customs Enforcement can grant parole under “narrowly prescribed circumstances, such as a present ‘urgent humanitarian reason or significant public benefit.’”
The document does not say where each family was to reunite.
In a previous filing, McConaghy said J.S.G. and his son came to the United States around June 11. J.S.G. had been deported in April last year, McConaghy said, and on June 13 pleaded guilty to unlawfully entering the country again.
His son went to the Noank shelter the same day.
McConaghy said J.S.G. is “awaiting travel papers for removal.”
A.D.B.A. and her daughter came around May 13, McConaghy said. Officials shipped her daughter to Connecticut the next day. A.D.B.A.’s immigration proceedings are ongoing.
In their complaint, attorneys with Connecticut Legal Services and the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School said both families fled violence in their home countries and hoped to get asylum, which is a legal process.
Someone murdered the Honduran boy’s grandparents, the attorneys said, and left the body of a family friend in his backyard.
The attorneys said gang members killed the Salvadoran girl’s stepfather when he refused to lend them his scooter.
A doctor who testified Wednesday in Bridgeport said both children have post-traumatic stress disorder.
In a news release, Massiel Zucco-Himmelstein, an immigration lawyer with Connecticut Legal Services, said all four came here “looking for freedom from fear, violence and persecution.”
“The federal government responded by ripping them away from their loving parents,” Zucco-Himmelstein said. “Their reunification and release is a victory for the rule of law and an expression of the compassion that this government should show to all immigrant families.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the reunification is “only a first step in a long path to recovery.”
“The focus now must be on permanent reunification, and giving the children the care and counseling they need as they pursue asylum here,” Blumenthal said in a statement. “I will continue to hold the administration accountable for the thousands of other migrant children who remain separated, with no serious plan or strategy for reunification despite court orders.”
The government separated more than 2,500 five- to 17-year-old children under Trump’s short-lived policy, NBC News reported Saturday.