U.S. feels heat to put families back together
Allegations: 3 kids sexually abused while in custody
SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration is under increasing pressure to speed up the reunification of immigrant families it separated at the Mexican border, following allegations three youngsters were sexually abused while in U.S. custody.
The government of El Salvador said the three, ages 12 to 17, were victimized at shelters in Arizona, and it asked the U.S. to make their return a priority.
“May they leave the shelters as soon as possible, because it is there that they are the most vulnerable,” Deputy Foreign Relations Minister Liduvina Magarin said in San Salvador on Thursday.
The U.S. government already is facing criticism over its slow pace in reuniting more than 2,600 children separated from their parents last spring before the Trump administration agreed to stop the practice.
Most have been reunited, but hundreds remain apart more than a month after the deadline set by a judge.
Before the Trump administration reversed course, many of the parents had been deported to their home countries while their children remained in shelters in the U.S.
Attorneys for the U.S. government and the immigrant families discussed how to accelerate the process at a hearing Friday in San Diego in front of U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who set the deadline.
Magarin gave few details Many families have been reunited, but hundreds are still apart more than a month after a deadline set by a judge. on the three cases other than to say they involved “sexual violations, sexual abuses.” She said her government is ready with lawyers and psychologists to help the families.
“It’s unbelievable that children who were fleeing violence here were met in the United States with the worst violence a child could encounter,” said Cesar Rios, director of the Salvadoran Migrant Institute.
In trying to reunite families, the Trump administration has put the onus on the American Civil Liberties Union, asking the organization to use its “considerable resources” to find parents in their home countries, mostly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.
The governments of those countries and nonprofit organizations have been trying to locate the families. Those efforts have included posting notices and putting hotline numbers on billboards in the hope a parent missing a child might call.
“Every day that these children are separated and left in government facilities does more damage,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney representing separated families.
The government and ACLU indicated in the hearing Friday that the process should start to speed up.
Gelernt told the judge as many as 200 cases could be resolved in the next week or two.
Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart said the government wants to remove any roadblocks.
More than 300 parents who have been deported are waiting for their sons and daughters to be returned to them in their homelands. Manyare growing anxious.
Among them is Evelin Roxana Meyer, whose 11year-old son, Eduardo Almendarez Meyer, was told this week that he won’t be leaving the U.S. until Nov. 27. He has been held at a government- contracted shelter in Brownsville, Texas, since he was separated from his father in June.
The boy’s mother said her husband was told when he signed his deportation papers that his son would be waiting for him in Honduras.
“Now it’ll be six months before we see him? Oh my God,” Meyer said Friday, crying during a telephone interview from her hometown of La Union.