A court ruling that immigrant rights advocates hoped could secure the urgent release of children and parents together from migrant family jails never came on Monday. NBC News reports that a federal judge overseeing an ongoing case seeking the release of parents said he won’t issue a ruling until next week, after a Friday deadline set by another judge for the release of children. What this means is that in the coming days the administration may be set to repeat one of the darkest periods in modern U.S. history.
Advocates had hoped Judge James Boasberg would have ordered the release of families from Pennsylvania’s Berks County Residential Center, Texas’ Karnes County Residential Center, and South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had continued to refuse to release them together following Judge Dolly Gee’s June ruling saying kids must be released by this Friday, July 17. Advocates fear officials may now separate families by that date.
“One potential remedy now being negotiated by the two parties in the California case would present parents with the choice of remaining in custody with their children instead of allowing their kids to be released and therefore separated from them,” NBC News reports. “This option has not been finalized, so may not become a possibility before the Friday deadline.”
This is no humane option because COVID-19 has hit detained families; advocates said in court there are at least 69 COVID-19 cases at these facilities, 33 of them among workers. BuzzFeed News said last month that an independent monitor further reported that “some staffers failed to wear masks or observe social distancing requirements.” These families are not safe in ICE custody, period.
Law360 reports that while Boasberg asked about the possibility of releasing detained people with health conditions, advocates said conditions at migrant family jails are dangerous for all. “Susan Baker Manning of Morgan Lewis & Bockius LLP gave a resounding yes,” the report said, “but the attorney emphasized that she didn't think any order short of total release of the detained families—who say they are living in ‘tinderbox-like conditions,’ ready to be set aflame by COVID-19—would be sufficient.”
Advocates like RAICES are continuing to call on all of us to publicly oppose continued family separation and press our legislators to mount pressure on ICE. The organization has created a form to email members of Congress to demand that families be released together, and is additionally hosting phone banking meetings to direct calls at ICE:
It needs to be repeated over and over that none of this has to be happening. ICE could have released these families to relatives or sponsors. ICE didn’t have to detain these families in the first place, but it’s chosen to keep intentionally hurting families. In just one example of Trump officials’ contempt towards immigrants, acting Department of Homeland Security Sec. Chad Wolf referred to the release of detained people amid the pandemic as “a jailbreak.”