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All the previously deported parents who had remained in federal immigration detention after returning to the southern border over a month ago in an effort to reunite with their children have been released from custody. Of the 29 parents in the group, 17 had remained in detention “without explanation,” the Los Angeles Times reported. By last Friday, all were free.
The parents had returned to the border in early March, and represent just a few of the hundreds of parents who were deported without their kids by the Trump administration. Many said they were pressured into agreeing to their own deportation even though they had valid asylum claims. Among the returning parents, “all passed credible fear interviews—the first step toward establishing claims for asylum.”
Just as importantly, the parents are now in the process of reuniting with their children, some of whom had been sent to live with relatives in the U.S., and others to foster homes. At least one child was still in a children’s detention center at the time of reporting. “By Friday, two of the parents released this week had been reunited with their children,” the Los Angeles Times continued.
Jesus, among the first of the returning parents to be released from ICE custody last month, had spent nearly a year apart from his son. "I don't remember what they are like,” 6-year-old Ariel commented before being reunified with his parents and big sister. A leader from Together Rising, one of the groups that have been assisting these asylum-seekers, “showed him a picture of his family, and he beamed with joy, recognition and relief.”
Jose Eduardo, another parent reunited with his child that month, said that the last time he saw his daughter Yaimy, “she was standing in a frigid border patrol holding cell.” When he returned from immigration court, she was gone. “Where is my daughter?” he cried to immigration officials. They lied to him, saying, “We don't know.” That, of course, was a lie, because Yaimy was stolen under the “zero tolerance” policy.
The government is essentially claiming “We don’t know” about potentially thousands of other families that were separated at the border before the official implementation of “zero tolerance,” claiming it could take up to two years to sift through nearly 50,000 files to find out exactly what happened to them. Federal immigration officials, the Huffington Post reported, “didn’t start tracing separated families as a searchable data set before April of last year, according to the filing, so records are spotty.”
Currently, a federal judge is deciding whether these families should be included in his reunification order from last year, and they should be. From family reunifications to releasing infants from immigration detention to these 29 parents, the administration has only acted when it’s been forced to by ongoing pressure and legal action (though not always). Families separated by the administration must be reunited by the administration. Family separation remains a crisis.