Campaign Action
More than 500 kidnapped migrant children continue to remain in U.S. custody despite a federal judge’s reunification order, and each day they continue to remain separated from their parents, a group of Senate Democrats write to Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen, “unacceptably exacerbates trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection.”
“We write to express our extreme frustration that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has prolonged the stay of 539 immigrant children separated from their parents in government custody—despite bipartisan outcry and a federal court order requiring family reunification,” the letter, led by U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California, states. “We urge DHS to take immediate steps to reunify all families separated at the Southwestern border because of this administration’s ineffective and cruel ‘zero tolerance’ policy.”
Hundreds remain in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody because their parents have already been deported, some coerced or mislead by immigration officials and sent back to the violence they were escaping. They need to be brought back, the senators write. “DHS should offer these parents an opportunity to return to the United States on a grant of humanitarian parole ... to reunite with their child. Such reunited families in turn should be released into the community to pursue claims for asylum or other forms of protection for which they may be eligible.”
The government has the ability to return deported parents under “well established parole authority,” America’s Voice notes. “Indeed, parole authority was already used by the Trump Administration in a very similar case involving two parents separated from their children who sued the federal government in Connecticut.” Yet, a month past Judge Dana Sabraw’s court order, the administration continues to slow-walk the reunification of hundreds of children. America’s Voice and Harris are among the numerous organizations and elected officials calling on Nielsen to resign in disgrace now.
The administration also claims that other parents are “ineligible” to reunite with their own kids, but under secretive criteria that has been wholly up to this unfit administration. The senators say they need to back these “eligibility” claims up with proof. “If there is credible evidence that a parent poses an imminent risk of harm to their child and a parent is unable to rebut that evidence,” they continue in the letter, “a state child welfare agency, not the federal government, is the appropriate entity to determine whether there is abuse or neglect or a child cannot safely be placed in their parent’s care.”
What we do know, is that children supposedly kept separated for their own safety are being abused by being kept separated. “Each passing day that DHS fails to act to reunite separated immigrant children with their parents unacceptably exacerbates trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection. Leading medical experts have condemned family separations as causing children numerous and—in some cases lifelong—psychological and physical developmental harms. They note immense stressors for children, including for infants and toddlers, of being forcibly separated from a parent and being cared for by strangers and in institutional settings for prolonged periods.”
Do not forget the children. DHS must reunite them in safety, and it’s long past time that administration officials be held accountable for this child abuse. “In the name of the 711 lost children, the families that have been ‘deleted’ by her agency, and common decency, I'm calling on Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, the architect of this humanitarian disaster, to step down,” said U.S. Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois during the first—and, to date, only—Senate hearing on family separation last month. With another court hearing scheduled for Friday, Judge Sabraw must finally hold officials, including Nielsen and Health and Human Services (HSS) Sec. Alex Azar, accountable. Enough.