Boy, 1, faces migration court

A one-year-old Honduran boy has appeared before an immigration judge in Arizona after being separated from his father under President Trump’s ‘‘zero tolerance’’ border policy.

The child, called Johan, drank milk from a bottle, played with a small purple ball that lit up when it hit the ground and removed his shoes long before the hearing began.

Inside the court in Phoenix the judge did not disguise his unease at the grim farce unfolding in front of him. At the point where he would usually ask immigrant defendants if they understand the proceedings, John Richardson addressed the boy’s lawyer. ‘‘I’m embarrassed to ask it, because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a one-year-old could learn immigration law,’’ he said.

The boy was one of hundreds of young children who still need to be reunited with their parents, having been parted at the Mexican border this summer in a crackdown that appalled much of the world and led Trump to make a rare policy reversal, signing an executive order to halt a process that opponents said he had needlessly initiated.

Yet in recent weeks Trump has deployed incendiary rhetoric on immigration at rallies and urged the Republican Party to make the issue a cornerstone of its pitch to voters before the November midterm elections.

On Sunday night the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said that the Trump administration was expected to miss a court deadline to reunite very young children detained as a result of the policy with their parents in more than half the cases. Mass separations began after Jeff Sessions, the attorneygeneral, announced in May that a new ‘‘zero tolerance’’ policy for entering the country was in full effect.

This means parents were processed as criminals awaiting prosecution and sent to jail rather than immigration detention. Children, who cannot be sent to jail with them, were placed in the custody of the health and human services department.

The White House blamed the Democrats and laws passed under the Obama administration for the situation but amid rising public outrage Trump ordered that families should remain together. Alex Azar, the health and human services secretary, said last week that ‘‘under 3000’’ children had been separated under the policy. Previously he had put the figure at 2047.

Two weeks ago the US district judge Dana Sabraw in San Francisco set a deadline of today for children under five to be returned to their families and July 26 for all older children.

The justice department asked Sabraw for a blanket extension last week. He refused but said that he would consider certain exceptions. The judge, who was appointed by George W Bush, the last Republican president before Trump, wrote that the ‘‘situation has reached a crisis level’’ and that the ‘‘chaotic circumstances’’ were of the government’s making.

Johan, the toddler who appeared before the judge in Phoenix, waited more than an hour for his hearing and sat quietly through most of it, although he burst into tears afterwards when a worker handed him to another person while she gathered his nappy bag.

‘‘I’m embarrassed to ask it [if the defendant understands the proceedings], because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a oneyear-old could learn immigration law’’ Judge to 1-year-old’s lawyer