63 days past judge's deadline, kidnapped migrant children are still separated from parents

by Gabe Ortiz

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday, Sep. 27, 2018 Thursday, Sep. 27, 2018 at 8:12:48am PDT

FILE - In this June 18, 2018, file photo, dignitaries take a tour of Southwest Key Programs Casa Padre, a U.S. immigration facility in Brownsville, Texas, where children are detained. Immigrant children described hunger, cold and fear in a voluminous court filing about the facilities where they were held in the days after crossing the border. Advocates fanned out across the southwest to interview more than 200 immigrant parents and children about conditions in U.S. holding facilities, detention centers and a youth shelter. The accounts form part of a case over whether the government is complying with a longstanding settlement over the treatment of immigrant youth in custody. The facility operates under a contract with the Department of Health and Human Services. There, teenage boys described going hungry and not being given enough time to speak with their parents by phone. (Miguel Roberts/The Brownsville Herald via AP, File)

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Thursday, Sept. 27, marks 63 days since a judge’s deadline ordering the administration to reunite migrant families separated at the border, yet over 180 kidnapped children remain separated, and not one official has been held in contempt, been fired, or been forced to resign over this catastrophic humanitarian crisis.

The most recent numbers show that 182 migrant children continue to remain separated from their parents, including six kids age 5 and under. The parents of 141 children have already been deported, including five kids age 5 and under. Having torn families apart with no plan set in place on how to reunite them, the filing also shows officials continue to mangle the reunification process.

“In the past week,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said, “parents have not been informed of changes in travel plans for their child and have traveled great distances only to have their child not arrive.” In other instances, “parents have not been given sufficient advance notice of an arriving child and the child has had to wait overnight, or for several days, for the parent to arrive at the reunification site.”

These kids are still detained, at risk of permanent trauma, under a policy Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen repeatedly claimed never existed. “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border,” she tweeted back in June. “Period.” But that was a lie.

This week, two investigative groups obtained a late April memo, almost assuredly signed by Nielsen, authorizing family separation at the U.S./Mexico border as official policy of the United States government. Nielsen repeatedly lied to us, and with the stroke of a pen, shattered—and continues to shatter—thousands of migrant lives.

Where are the resignations? Where’s the accountability? Why aren’t any asses getting hauled in front of Congress? If this Congress won’t do it, get a new one that will, and when that time comes, the first one must be Kirstjen Nielsen. “Kids were separated from moms and dads on purpose,” said Frank Sharry of America’s Voice. “She signed off on it in private and denied it in public. She knew. She lied. She needs to resign.”