Family separations at border challenged
Advocates urge emergency stop to ‘horrific, cruel policy’
Several organizations have filed an emergency request with a high-profile international humanrights watchdog, asking it to intervene and require the United States to stop separating children from their parents caught crossing the border illegally.
The emergency request for precautionary measures – a sort of injunction – takes aim at the “zero-tolerance” policy that U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced in April. Sessions directed the Border Patrol to refer all people caught crossing the border illegally for criminal prosecution, regardless of their situation.
As a result, children traveling with parents caught at the border are forcibly removed and placed into government care while their parents face criminal charges in court.
The groups filed the request on Thursday with the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights on behalf of five Central American migrants who Border Patrol agents detained in Texas in the past two weeks and whose children were taken from them.
The United States is a member of the commission, whose website describes its mission as promoting and protecting “human rights in the American hemisphere.” But it is unclear whether President Donald Trump’s administration would abide by the commission’s ruling, which is non-binding and up to each member nation to enforce.
The Department of Justice declined to comment, while the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment.
“There is no process in place for the children to communicate with their parents, or for them to know where their parents are or, vice versa, for the parents to communicate with their children,” the 23-page filing with the commission reads. “There is likewise no process in place to guarantee that the removed children will be promptly and safely reunited with their parents.”
The emergency request also argues that family separations violate human-rights standards established by the Washington-D.C.-based commission – and which the U.S. endorsed – and can cause “irreparable harm” to migrant parents and their children.
Efren Olivares, the racial and economic justice director for the Texas Civil Rights Project, which is representing the five migrants, said they’ve been documenting a growing number of family separations in south Texas.
“The big problem is that the children are being taken away before there is any determination about, not only the parents’ criminal liability, but also their potential immigration relief,” he said. “Many of these people are asylum seekers.”
Besides the Texas Civil Rights Project, the other groups making the request are the Women’s Refugee Commission, the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law, and the private firm Garcia & Garcia Attorneys at Law.
In one case described in the request, two detained migrant mothers reported that immigration officials took their daughters, saying they’d be bathed, but never returned. And they haven’t seen their children since.