ACLU sues administration to stop separating families

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit Friday accusing the U.S. government of broadly separating immigrant families seeking asylum.

The lawsuit follows action the ACLU took in the case of a Congolese woman and her 7-year-old daughter, who the group said was taken from her mother “screaming and crying” and placed in a Chicago facility. While the woman was released Tuesday from a San Diego detention center, the girl remains in the facility 2,000 miles away.

Immigrant advocates say the mother and daughter’s case is emblematic of the ap- proach taken by President Donald Trump’s administration. The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in San Diego, asks a judge to declare family separation unlawful and says hundreds of families have been split by immigration authorities.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has not announced a formal policy to hold adult asylum seekers separately from their children. But administration officials are considering separating parents and children to deter others from trying to enter the U.S.

The department declined to comment on the lawsuit. DHS acting press secretary Tyler Houlton, in an earlier statement on the case of the Congolese woman and her daughter, said government officials have to verify that children entering the U.S. are not victims of traffickers and that the adult accompanying them is actually their parent. In separate court papers, the U.S. government said it is awaiting DNA tests to confirm the woman is the girl’s mother.

It’s hard to determine how often parents and children are placed in separate facilities after they seek asylum, which is granted to people who have a credible fear of persecution if they are forced to return to their home country. Different agencies hold adults and children. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains adults accused of immigration violations, while the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services cares for unaccompanied immigrant children.