A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to return to the U.S. nearly a dozen parents who were unjustly deported without their children as a result of the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy last year, finding that federal immigration agents coerced some parents into agreeing to be deported and falsely telling others that asylum laws had changed.
Judge Dana Sabraw, who last year ordered the administration to return thousands of children who were kidnapped from their families under the policy, “ruled that government agents unlawfully prevented those parents from pursuing asylum cases,” The New York Times reported. Advocates have previously documented the abusive tactics by abusive officers, like “providing false and misleading information,” in order to deport parents faster.
Among the parents expected to return is David Xol, a Guatemalan asylum-seeker who has been separated from his nine-year-old son Byron since May 2018. The administration kept the boy in custody for nearly a year, even though a Texas family, Matthew and Holly Sewell, had David’s permission to sponsor him. Finally in April, a judge ordered the administration to release him to the family, and the boy has been living with them since.
“It wasn't immediately clear when David Xol and other parents would come back,” The Times continued, though the Sewell family called David’s potential return “wonderful news.” His attorney Ricardo de Anda said “he has arranged for David and Byron to live together in the area so that Byron can stay in the same school,” but cautioned he yet doesn’t know if the administration will appeal the judge’s ruling.
Should that happen, it would be spiteful but unsurprising move from an administration that intentionally inflicted harm on thousands of kids. “Children who did not understand why they were separated from their parents suffered elevated levels of mental distress,” the Health and Human Services inspector general said in a new report, with some kids believing that “their parents had abandoned them” as others “expressed acute grief that caused them to cry inconsolably.”
While so many more parents were unjustly deported without their kids, returning them back to the U.S. to be with their kids and giving them a chance to pursue their asylum claims is a start to correcting this wrong. "We are thrilled that the court squarely rejected the government's position that he lacked authority to bring back parents," said Attorney Lee Gelernt. "We will do everything we can to continue to look for ways to bring back the parents who he did not order be returned."
