The Trump administration has stolen nearly 1,000 children from their families at the southern border since a federal judge’s injunction against the practice last summer, a leading civil rights organization says, including nearly 200 children under the age of 5 and for reasons as minor as a dirty diaper. Now the group is asking that same judge to once again intervene.
In court documents filed Thursday, the American Civil Liberties Union said that officials have separated over 900 kids since Judge Dana Sabraw’s June 2018 ruling, which made an exception if the child was in danger. But advocates have been saying for months that officials have exploited this exception—including falsely accusing parents fleeing gang violence of gang ties—in increasing numbers and with increasing cruelty. In the motion, the ACLU asked Sabraw both to halt the separations and “to clarify a set of standards” to avoid more of this senselessness.
“Lawyers wrote that one migrant lost his daughter because a U.S. Border Patrol agent claimed that he had failed to change the girl’s diaper,” The Washington Post reported. “Another migrant lost his child because of a conviction on a charge of malicious destruction of property with alleged damage of $5. One father, who lawyers say has a speech impediment, was separated from his 4-year-old son because he could not clearly answer Customs and Border Protection agents’ questions.”
One dad listed in the court filing was separated from his 3-year-old daughter in March. “Mr. A.B.” pleaded with officials to conduct a DNA test, but they refused, “and forcibly separated him from his daughter.” The child, “M,” turned four in U.S. custody. When Mr. A.B. finally got to talk to her on the phone after two months, she “was adamant she did not want to speak with him because she was mad at him.”
But M’s misery didn’t end there, because in foster care, she was abused by another child in the household, with the court filing stating that “she regressed in toilet training.” Meanwhile, her dad had become despondent, passing his initial asylum interview but remaining in Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. By July officials had finally agreed to perform the DNA test, which confirmed that yes, Mr. A.B. was M’s dad, just as he’d said from the start. But by then, with no idea how much longer he’d be jailed, he agreed to be deported. M is still in the U.S.
Officials have also separated families over a parent’s HIV status, Customs and Border Protection chief Brian Hastings told the House Judiciary Committee last week. "If a mother or father has HIV-positive status,” Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin asked, “is that alone enough to justify separation from their child?" Hastings replied, "It is, it's a communicable disease under the guidance." Hastings tried to walk it back 24 hours later, but it was too late, because it’s clear it’s always been about the cruelty.
“They’re taking what was supposed to be a narrow exception for cases where the parent was genuinely a danger to the child and using it as a loophole to continue family separation,” attorney Lee Gelernt told the Post. “What everyone understands intuitively and what the medical evidence shows, this will have a devastating effect on the children and possibly cause permanent damage to these children, not to mention the toll on the parents.” Family separation remains a crisis.
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