The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Advocates seek reunion for 2 children held in Conn.
BRIDGEPORT — Advocates for two children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexican border weeks ago are expected to ask a U.S. District judge on Wednesday to reunite the families permanently.
U.S. Attorney John H. Durham on Monday ruled that the government must comply with a federal judge’s order to match the two children with their parents.
The two, a 9-year-old boy from Honduras and a 14-year-old girl from Guatemala, were sent to a childcare facility in Noank, a village in Groton, while the parents were being held in Texas.
In the rapidly evolving case, a second hearing in the U.S. District Court in Bridgeport is scheduled for Wednesday.
The children are just two of the estimated 2,700 children — some still in diapers — who were separated from their parents at the border by U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
After a hearing on July 11, Federal Judge Victor A. Bolden ruled that the breakup of the two families was unconstitutional.
His decision was apparently the first time that a federal judge has ruled that the practice of separating children from their families violated their Constitutional rights.
At that hearing, about 200 protestors turned out outside the federal building to voice their displeasure with ICE and President Donald Trump’s administration under its Zero Tolerance policy.
The names of the children were not released. In court records, the boy is called JSR and the girl is referred to as VFB. Their parents are now free on parole, officials say.
“The children were forcibly separated from their parents and detained in Connecticut after they came to the United States seeking asylum,” said Joshua Perry, a spokesman for Connecticut Legal Services, one of the court advocates for the children.
“VFB was torn away from her mother two months ago as part of the Trump Administration’s draconian zero tolerance policy and JSR was forcibly separated from his father a month ago. Neither child has seen their parent since.”
While the practice of pulling kids away from the moms and dads at the border has stopped, the policy has shocked child advocates around the globe.
“The circumstances of their being reunited will be determined by the Department of Justice,” confirmed U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. “And they will be reunited in a confidential way so that their privacy will be maintained.”
Blumenthal said that the court orders demanding swift reunions of children and parents “respected basic humanity and human rights,” but he quickly added that the DOJ’s policy of separating children with their parents at the Mexican border is “cruel and inhumane.”
“These children have endured unimaginable tragedy in their lives,” Blumenthal said. “Our focus should be reuniting these children as quickly and as permanently as possible and giving them the care and counseling that they need to overcome the harm already done to them.”
Blumenthal, a former state attorney general, said that he would continue to back the childrens’ legal case.
Wednesday, both the parents and children should be present in the Bridgeport court. Blumenthal said that the court is expected to order “permanent reunification.”
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., while praising the Bolden decision, said there are many hundreds of children and parents who remain in a state of confusion over when — and even if — they will ever be reunited with each other.
“They never took even the most basic measures necessary to ultimately get them back together again,” Himes said. “As my colleague Rosa DeLauro (DConn.) said, your clothes at the dry cleaners get better documentation — which says a lot about their moral sensibility and their competence.”
He added that “it’s not inconceivable” that there could be many children who officials “will never know who or where their parents are.”
Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said on Monday that the separation policy amounts to child abuse.
“It should not take a lawsuit to convince President Trump to reunite the families his administration heartlessly ripped apart — nor should it take public intervention from governors, United States senators and members of Congress,” the governor said. “The president’s zero-tolerance policy, which is nothing short of child abuse, has caused unimaginable trauma that will doubtless harm these children and their parents for the rest of their lives.”
Still, Monday’s “notice of compliance” from Durham was seen as “a victory for the rule of law” by the advocates of JSR and VFB.
“Releasing these kids and their parents is the first step in addressing the trauma that the government’s cruel ‘zero tolerance policy’ has caused on JSR and VFB,” said Hannah Schoen, a law student intern at the Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School. “We are hopeful that these families will now begin to heal, even as we know it will take months or years for them to overcome the harm caused by the government.”
Himes said that those seeking asylum are fleeing “unimaginable horror.”
“Look, if you’re a criminal, you’re not going to show up at the border with a couple of little kids,” he said.