Judge orders Trump administration to reunite families separated at border within 30 days

A two-year-old Honduran asylum seeker cries as her mother is searched and detained near the US-Mexico border
Getty Images
David Gardner27 June 2018

A judge today gave Donald Trump’s administration 30 days to reunite families separated by his “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

Federal judge Dana Sabraw ruled that border agents could no longer split up parents and children caught crossing into the country illegally. It came as 17 states, including California and New York, sued the government over the “cruel and inhumane” policy.

More than 2,300 migrant children have been taken from their parents since early May, when the US started prosecuting all adults caught illegally entering the country.

Many children remain in detention centres, some of them thousands of miles from their parents, despite the president signing an executive order last week which he claimed put a halt to separations.

Judge Sabraw, at the US District Court in San Diego, ordered the government to reunite children under five with their parents within 14 days. For children of five and older, the deadline is 30 days.

In his court opinion, he wrote: “Under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property. We are a country of laws, and of compassion.”

The administration can appeal against the prelimary injuction, in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union for a mother and her six-year-old daughter separated after she sought asylum from persecution in Democratic Republic of Congo. They have been reunited.

The ruling also requires that children must be freed if their parents are. Lee Gelernt of ACLU said it was “an enormous victory for parents and children who thought they may never see each other again. Tears will be flowing.”

The 17 states suing in the US District Court in Seattle accuse the government of denying families, many of whom are fleeing gang violence in Central America, their right to seek asylum.

But Mr Trump received a boost when the Sup-reme Court upheld his travel ban targeting five mainly Muslim countries. In a 5-4 ruling by its conservative majority, it overruled an earlier decision that the ban was unconstitutional. The ban stops most people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen entering the US.

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