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A federal judge appeared to scoff at the Trump administration’s claim that it could take up to two years to identify the potentially thousands of families that were torn apart at the southern border before the official implementation of the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy, saying during a court proceeding this week that some families could even be identified “right away.”
The administration had claimed a two-year timeline “because manually reviewing the cases of nearly 50,000 children would ‘overwhelm’ the office’s resources,” the New York Times reported earlier this month. “The ACLU said in a court filing Monday that the government's timetable showed ‘callous disregard’ for families,” the AP reported, “and asked the judge to order that all separated families be identified in three months.”
While U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw didn’t set a deadline at this time, and has not yet ruled on reunification of all these families, he did appear to agree that the administration’s two-year claim was out of the question. "This is a very significant issue, obviously, it is as important as the initial reunification and the same care and attention and energy needs to be paid to this second reunification with this class going back to July of 2017," he said. Sabraw ordered the reunification of families separated under the policy last summer.
“We believe, contrary to the government's claims, at least a partial list of separated children very likely exists or could be generated with data that CBP has at its disposal,” the ACLU tweeted, urging a swifter timeline. “Here’s the bottom line: The government continues to refuse to prioritize child welfare … identifying all of the victims of the government’s separation policy is the first step to ensuring that no child is permanently orphaned.”
“The hearing was at times tense,” NBC News reported, “with Department of Justice attorney Scott Stewart taking issue with what he called ‘the extremeness’ of the ACLU's proposals.” No, extreme is literally ripping children out of their mother’s arms. Extreme is tearing apart potentially thousands of families and then claiming it would just be so much darn work to put them back together. Extreme is claiming that, with our vast resources, it could take up to two years to correct this humanitarian disaster. That is extreme.