ACLU contends Trump administration misses deadline to reunite separated families

The Trump administration and the ACLU are at odds over whether the government met Thursday's court-imposed deadline to reunify nearly 2,600 children who were separated from their parents after the families were apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border for trying to illegally enter the country.

Trump administration officials announced late Thursday that 1,442 children had been reunited and that by the end of the day zero children would remain in custody with parents eligible for reunification. Earlier, government lawyers said 1,637 parents had been deemed eligible for reunification.

An additional 771 children remained in government custody because their parents remained ineligible for reunification, including 431 with parents who may have already been deported, 120 with parents who waived reunification and 21 with parents who have criminal backgrounds.

"ICE and especially ERO has made a concerted effort and dedicated an inordinate amount of resources to ensure that these reunification did occur," Matthew Albence, executive director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, said Thursday during press call. "The overall first guiding principal is the safety of these children."

But an ACLU attorney on Thursday blasted the Trump administration for excluding 914 parents from the list of parents deemed eligible for reunification, including the more than 400 parents who may have already been deported without their children and several hundred others who he said may have mistakenly waived reunification either because they were pressured by the government or they didn't understand what they were doing.

The administration missed its first deadline of reuniting the first group — children under age 5. The government reunited 57 of the 103 "tender age" children with their parents.

"I think it's accurate to say they didn't meet the deadline. The only deadline they met was their self-defined deadline," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.

In Phoenix, the Lutheran Social Services is providing humanitarian assistance to reunited families. 

As of Thursday, 174 reunited families had been dropped off at the agency's offices in Phoenix shortly after being reunited by ICE, said Stephanie Petrilli, the Lutheran Social Services' communications director. The 174 families included 182 children, she said.

Chris Meekins, a senior officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the government will work with the court to figure out how children who remain in its custody will be reunited with parents already deported.

Albence said parents already deported were given the chance to be deported with their children but chose to leave them behind in the U.S.

"A lot of these parents ... the reason these parents are coming here in the first place and paying these smugglers $5,000 and $6,000, $10,000 to make that dangerous journey across Central America and Mexico is because they want to get their children here," Albence said. "And once their children are here they are generally not going to want to give up the opportunity to have that child remain here in the country which is why they frequently decline to have that child removed with them."

One mother deported to Guatemala, however, told The Arizona Republic that she chose to be deported without her son because she was told she would be reunited with him in two months if she agreed to be deported immediately rather than having to wait for seven months to be deported together.

The mother, Lourdes Marianela DeLeon, was deported on June 7. As of Thursday, seven weeks later, she was still waiting for the U.S. government to send him back to her in Guatemala, even though an immigration judge in New York has granted him voluntary departure.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association on Thursday called for the Trump administration to allow the more than 400 deported parents to return to the U.S. to be reunited with them here. DeLeon, however, said she does not want to return to the U.S.

"The only thing I want is that they send me my son," she said.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego will hold a hearing on Friday to determine whether the government met the deadline and whether to grant a motion filed by the ACLU asking for a stay blocking the government from deporting reunified families for at least seven days.

The ACLU contends the government plans to immediately deport hundreds of reunited families with final removal orders even though they have not had time to discuss legal options with their children or with lawyers, including whether to fight their deportations and seek asylum, whether to be deported together or whether to allow children to remain in the U.S. with relatives to seek asylum on their own.

"The government took these children and separated and many of the children were separated for months and months and months and now the government could at least give them seven days to figure out their options," Gelernt said.

Government lawyers are fighting the seven-day stay, arguing that parents have already had sufficient time to consider legal options, and a stay would interfere with the government's authority to enforce immigration laws.

The ACLU filed a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's separation of families, which were carried out under a zero-tolerance policy aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration, including the tens of thousands of asylum-seeking families who cross the border illegally each year, mostly from poverty and violence-plagued areas of Mexico as well as the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In all, 2,551 children were detained under the controversial policy.

Under the policy, all immigrants entering the U.S. anywhere other than legal entry points were arrested and their children scattered to Health and Human Services centers across the country for care.

Prior to the Trump policy, immigrants caught entering at non-entry points with children had simply been sent back with the children.

The Trump administration halted the separation of families at the border on June 20 amid withering political pressure and a global outcry.

Shortly after, Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to reunify children under 5 by July 10 and all children by July 26.

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