Jennifer L. Henn  |  October 21, 2020

Category: Legal News

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The parents of 545 children separated from them at the border have not been found.

The Trump administration has been unable to locate the parents of 545 immigrant children who were seized as their families attempted to cross the Mexican border more than two years ago, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department told a federal judge this week.

The disclosure came as part of an update from lawyers for both the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government over the separation policy.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Trump administration in June 2018 put an end to its “zero-tolerance” campaign to prosecute every adult who entered the U.S. illegally from Mexico in criminal court and to seize all children brought with them.

Judge Sabraw also ordered the government to immediately return the children to their parents.

The updates were submitted to the court in writing Tuesday, in advance of a scheduled conference with the judge Thursday to discuss the case.

Originally, it was thought all the children were seized in June 2018 when the zero-tolerance policy, championed by then-U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was made public. Nearly 2,700 children were reportedly taken into federal custody that month. Thousands of those families were reunited within weeks of Judge Sabraw’s orders to do so.

But the Trump administration later confirmed it had actually been separating immigrant children from their parents starting in 2017, under a pilot program. Because that was unknown at the time the ACLU filed suit, those children — as many as 1,556 — were not included in the judge’s original reunification orders.

Sabraw issued another order, in March 2019, requiring the return of immigrant children seized in 2017 to their parents.

The ACLU and several pro-bono law firms were appointed to a steering committee that was formed by the court to find the immigrant children and parents separated by the administration in order to bring them back together.

That committee “learned that more than 1,000 families were separated in 2017 based on data provided by the Department of Homeland Security. Of those, the committee has been able to contact the parents of more than 550 children and believes about 25 of them may have a chance to come back to the U.S. for reunification,” NBC News reported.

The parents of 545 children separated from them at the border have not been found.

The majority of the parents who have not been located are believed to have returned to their home countries, the ACLU said, according to the Associated Press.

Volunteers have searched “by going door to door in Guatemala and Honduras,” among other places, the Associated Press reported this week. The searches have been largely suspended during the coronavirus pandemic, but have recently resumed to a limited extent where possible, the recent court filings say.

“People ask when we will find all of these families, and sadly, I can’t give an answer. I just don’t know,” NBC News quoted Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, as saying this week. “But we will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes. The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives.”

In addition to the parents who have not been located, Gelernt told NPR, some 360 of the separated children have not been located. Many of the separated immigrant children were infants when they were taken from their parents two to three years ago.

“Some of these children were just babies when they were separated,” Gelernt told NPR. “Almost their whole life, they have not been with their parents.”

The parents whose children were taken from them are included in the ACLU’s class action lawsuit, which is being handled by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California in San Diego. The class action lawsuit claims the Department of Justice violated their constitutional right to due process and federal asylum laws, among other things.

In November, the plaintiffs and the government reached an agreement in which the government would reconsider petitions for asylum submitted by some of the parents involved.

Do you know someone who was separated from their children at the U.S. border with Mexico? Do you know a family that was separated and has not yet been reunited? Tell us about it in the comment section below.

The ACLU and fellow plaintiffs are represented by Lee Gelernt, Judy Rabinovitz, Anand Balakrishnan, Bardis Vakili, Stephen B. Kang and Spencer E. Amdur of the American Civil Liberties Union.

The Immigrant Children Class Action Lawsuit is MS. L, et al. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, et al.,Case No. 3:18-cv-00428-DMS-MDD, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.

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5 thoughts onParents of 545 Immigrant Children Seized at Border Not Found

  1. Cindy J Briggs says:

    No Child should ever be separated from the parents like this who knows what country the parents were sent to and how do they get back to get there kids?
    it’s just all wrong

  2. Debra Watson says:

    This was a bad idea from the start.These are children plain and simple. Do they deserve this?This is pathetic to know this is happening in this country!

  3. MICHELLE R SMITH says:

    What kind of parents get separated from their children and stop looking for them? The kind that are sex trafficking their children for money. Child sex trafficking is a $800 billion criminal enterprise in the U.S. alone. These kids were being trafficked across the border by criminals hoping to profit from selling them for sex or other dispicable things – no doubt about it. CHILDREN JUST DON’T GO MISSING!! Wake up America – it’s going on right under our noses!! #SaveTheChildren #BreakTheChains #KnowTheSigns

  4. Casey says:

    Im. Sure they haven’t found the parents. They probably killed themselves from having their kids taken. Etf is wrong with america

    1. Jane says:

      Were letting too many immigrants in.

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