U.S. to keep kids apart from detained parents
Azar says parents can regain custody if asylum dropped
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration will not reunite any migrant children with parents still held in immigrant detention facilities unless federal law is changed, a top administration official told Congress on Tuesday, adding a new level of confusion and fear in the family separation crisis created by the White House.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, testifying on Capitol Hill, provided the clearest statement to date of administration policy and confirmed what immigrant advocates have feared: The only way parents can quickly be reunited with their children is to drop their claims for asylum in the United States and agree to be deported.
If parents pursue asylum claims, administration officials plan to hold them in custody until hearings are complete — a process that can take months and in some instances years because of a backlog of several hundred thousand cases.
And while that process takes place and the parents are in custody, their children will not be returned to them, Azar said, citing current rules that allow children to be held in immigrant detention for no more than 20 days.
“If the parent remains in detention, unfortunately, under rules that are set by Congress and the courts, they can’t be reunified while they’re in detention,” Azar told the Senate Finance Committee. He said the department could place children with relatives in the United States if they can be located and properly vetted.
Azar’s department has custody of 2,047 children separated from their parents after they were apprehended crossing the border illegally since May. That’s when the Trump administration began enforcing a “zero tolerance” policy that required prosecution of all adults crossing the border — and separate detention of any minors with them.
His statement brought protests from Democrats and immigrant advocates.
“The administration is holding children hostage to push parents to drop their asylum claims,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., tweeted.
The fate of the children, and wrenching reports of their plight, has created a political firestorm for the White House and a nightmare for the families affected. In some cases, parents have been deported without their children, or infants and young children have been moved to distant states while their parents await court processing.
The limit on how long children can be held in immigrant detention facilities stems from a 1997 court ruling known as the Flores settlement. The administration has asked a federal judge to modify those rules and allow families to be held together in custody for longer periods. The Obama administration made a similar request in 2015, but a judge refused.
The White House has also asked Congress to change federal law to allow longer detentions. That process is moving slowly, and Trump has proved an uncertain ally for Republican leaders, vacillating as to whether he wants new legislation or not.
The House is scheduled to vote on a Republicandrafted bill Wednesday that would overhaul the immigration system, but its prospects are dim — and it almost certainly would die in the Senate.
If the bill fails, as expected, the House may take up narrower legislation focused specifically on family separation. But Congress is set to recess Thursday for an extended July 4 holiday, so the schedule will allow just hours to consider that proposal.
Trump signed an executive order last week that he said would halt the separation of parents and children by detaining families together. Since then, his administration has struggled to articulate a plan to reunite families.
Jonathan White, head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a branch of the Health and Human Services department, said only that the department was working with other agencies “to facilitate reunification with a child as soon as that is practical.”
But Azar conceded in his Senate testimony that the department has not yet been able to put all the parents in communication with their children.
He also warned that if parents remain in a detention facility and the agency gives custody of a child to someone else — a relative in the U.S., for example — the parents eventually might have to go to court to get the child back.
“We cannot sort of pull a child back from a relative. We don’t have the legal authority,” he said.