Two days after a court-ordered deadline, the Trump administration said it had reunited just 57 children under age five, out of over 100, that were kidnapped from parents at the U.S./Mexico border over the past weeks. The remaining 46 children, according to The Washington Post, won’t be returned “for reasons that range from concerns about their safety to their parents having been deported”:
Officials said they are searching for sponsors for children whose parents are ineligible to take custody of them, including another parent, relatives or a legal guardian in the United States.
“Seven adults were found not to be a parent,” according to ThinkProgress, but there’s no indication if they were perhaps an aunt, grandparent, or other relative. When it comes to the kids whose parents have already been deported, officials claimed they’re in the “process of contacting the 12 adults ... and working with foreign consulates in an effort to return their children to them, the officials said.”
For the children who have been reunited, the moments have been joyful, and bittersweet. Walter Armando Jimenez Melendez embraced his four year old, separated for 43 days. "From here on out, I want everything for him to be happiness,” he said. But the separation had taken a toll for Mirce Alba Lopez and her three year old. “He didn’t recognize me,” she said. “My joy turned temporarily to sadness.”
What is also for sure is that the administration missed Judge Dana Sabraw’s deadline. “If in fact 57 children have been reunited because of the lawsuit, we could not be more happy for those families,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said. “But make no mistake about it: the government missed the deadline even for these 57 children. Accordingly, by the end of the day we will decide what remedies to recommend to the court for the non-compliance."
Sabraw had ordered officials to return children under age five to their parents by Tuesday, July 10, and all children by July 26. But if the administration struggled this much to reunite just 100 kids—the ACLU, which sued over family separation, ended up having to help the administration with reunifications—what does it mean for the estimated 3,000 other kids who remain separated?