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Family Separation: A Daily Diaryby Roger W. SmithJuly 2020*****************************************************January 10, 2017A report, “Betraying Family Values: How Immigration Policy at the United States Border is Separating Families,” is published by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS), the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), and Kids in Need of Defense (KIND). Numerous examples of individual cases were provided in the report.Among the report’s findings:Over the last year, a disturbing new trend has emerged at the U.S. border: families torn apart.* As an increasing number of families migrate together to the United States, the number of documented cases of family separation has escalated These cases are not specific to certain families, nationalities, or regions of the United States. They affect siblings, parents, spouses, small children, and grandparents, both U.S. citizens and noncitizens.Separation has long been recognized to occur during the migration journey, but it also occurs after apprehension and while in U.S. immigration custody, at official ports of entry, and to those apprehended while crossing into the United States at unofficial entry points, in states including California, Arizona, and Texas. In some instances, the U.S. government affirmatively renders children “unaccompanied” by physically separating and transferring children away from their accompanying family members. These entry points, in states including California, Arizona, and Texas. In some instances, the U.S. government affirmatively renders children “unaccompanied” by physically separating and transferring children away from their accompanying family members. These cases are sometimes the result of inadequate government systems and practices to protect families, and in others they are the result of an intentional focus on enforcement, deterrence, and punishment. There is no agency-wide policy defining what constitutes a family, no traceable documentation of those familial relationships, nor a requirement for documentation of all family separation incidents.In all cases, family separation practices effectively strip away a family member’s right to family unity, are deeply traumatic, and cause significant long-term consequences to a family’s integrity, safety, and access to due process.Family separation has profound long-term consequences for those facing removal or repatriation. Parents or spouses may be removed while their child or spouse is still making a protection claim. Even when a parent may have the opportunity to be repatriated together with their child, they are forced to make the impossible decision between staying together and having their child forfeit their legal claim or suffering separation.… the government’s lack of consistent mechanisms for identifying and tracking family members result in family members being detained or removed separately and often losing contact with each other. Because the Department of Homeland Security and other government agencies currently have little policy guidance on humanitarian considerations during enforcement actions, many families are needlessly torn apart.*****************************************************March 3, 2017It is reported by Reuters correspondent Julia Edwards Ainsley, who broke the story, that “women and children crossing together illegally into the United States could be separated by U.S. authorities under a proposal being considered by the Department of Homeland Security.” (The administration’s "zero tolerance" policy would not formally be launched until April 2018.)Quoting unnamed government officials, Ainsley noted that “part of the reason for the proposal is to deter mothers from migrating to the United States with their children. The policy shift would allow the government to keep parents in custody while they contest deportation or wait for asylum hearings. Children would be put into protective custody with the Department of Health and Human Services, in the “least restrictive setting” until they can be taken into the care of a U.S. relative or state-sponsored guardian.”This was consistent, as Ainsley noted, with President Trump’s call for ending “catch and release,” in which migrants who cross illegally are freed to live in the United States while awaiting legal proceedings.*****************************************************March 6, 2017Interviewed on "The Situation Room." by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly confirms that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering separating children from their parents at the border."Yes, I am considering - in order to deter more movement along this terribly dangerous network -- I am considering exactly that,” Kelly said. “They will be well cared for as we deal with their parents."* * *U.S. Congressman Henry Cuellar criticized the proposal: “Bottom line: separating mothers and children is wrong. That type of thing is where we depart from border security and get into violating human rights.”* * *Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center (an organization dedicated to defending and advancing the rights of low-income immigrants in the U.S.), is interviewed on the news program. Democracy Now! Regarding the proposed initiative announced by Kelly she said:[T]his is a proposal, which means we can still try our best to stop this. This really amounts--if it goes forward, this would amount to state-sanctioned violence against children, against families that are coming to the United States to seek safety. We really--everything in this administration right now is--there’s such a lack of transparency. …Besides cruelty and inhumanity and inflicting emotional and psychological trauma, I think it’s deterrence. Right? We saw this even under the Obama administration, and the Trump administration clearly has begun wanting to show that immigrants aren’t welcome here, even immigrants who are seeking refuge. … the deterrence approach has been a failed approach. You cannot deter a mother from making the difficult decision of trying to save her children’s lives. I mean, any mother, any parent, will do that. And no wall, no level of detention, is ever going to stop that.… we don’t have the details yet. But what we understand that’s being proposed is, yes, the family units would first be detained. Right? They would be detained when they arrive at the border. And again, let’s remember that these are called--currently, we have three family detention centers. There are two in Texas and one in Pennsylvania. These are jails, right? These are families that are being put in jail. The children then are sent to a Health and Human Services facility, but, again, that is still a jail. Neither the children nor the family members, nor the parents, belong in jail. Families belong together. Children belong with their mothers and their fathers. …What we believe will happen is that the families will be separated. Children will be ripped apart from their parents’ arms and placed in these separate detention centers … children will be, one, separated from their family, and, two, we have no idea what process the children will have to go through--again, because they’ll be by themselves.*****************************************************April 5, 2017Testifying a month later before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Secretary Kelly issues a qualified denial. Pressed on separating mothers from their children at the border, he said that they would only be separated “if the child’s life is in danger” or if the mother is an addict. Senator Kamala Harris asked Kelly whether he would put the policy in writing. He responded by saying that a “verbal directive” is enough.*****************************************************November 8, 2017Kirstjen Nielsen, President Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, is confirmed by Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.Nielsen was challenged on several topics by Democratic members of the committee. Asked whether she would be capable of standing up to the White House, Nielsen answered that she would not hesitate to challenge President Trump if asked to do something "in violation of the law."Senator Kamala Harris pressed Nielsen on her plans for immigration enforcement, asking her what she would do if Congress fails to legalize the nearly 700,000 "dreamers" whose protections under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program were set to expire in 2018. Nielsen said that if Congress failed to act, DACA recipients would not be an enforcement priority for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and she said that DHS would not use dreamers' personal information to track down and deport them.Further details on the hearing, and subsequent follow up questions:Senator Harris: "I am running out of time, so I just want to ask you one more question. Do you agree with a policy that would expedite deportation of unaccompanied minors who are coming from those Central American countries?"Nielsen: "I believe in reuniting children with their families. "If their families are not here --"Senator Harris interrupted, pointing out to Nielsen that doing so would only put the children back in the same desperate circumstances they had fled in the first place.Nielsen: "Well, in that case I would certainly want to work with you to understand more about the implications."Senator Harris submitted in writing the questions she ran out of time at the hearing to ask about family separations. Nielsen was required by law to answer under oath. The questions and Nielsen’s responses were attached to the official transcript of Nielsen's confirmation hearing:The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights has reported a dramatic increase in the number of requests for Child Advocates for children separated from parents by immigration authorities this year. For example, in New York, there has been nearly a fourfold increase in such requests as compared to the same quarter of the prior year.1. If confirmed, will you issue written guidance to make clear that mothers are not to be separated from their children at the border?Kirsten Nielsen’s’ response: I am not familiar with the increase cited in the question nor its causation. Should I be confirmed, I will work with Acting Commissioner McAleenan and Acting Director Homan to understand the current practice and policy and if necessary work with them to issue additional guidance.2. What are you doing to ensure families are not being systematically separated, and if they are, what steps is the Department taking to ensure reunification and communication of separated family members?Nielsen: As the nominee, I currently have no role in what you describe. If confirmed I will review current policies to ensure OHS is not unnecessarily separating families. My understanding is that while ICE has limited-capacity family residential detention facilities to house alien family members, the separation of alien families generally occurs outside the United States when one or both parents, particularly those from countries in Central America, depart their countries and illegally enter the United States, leaving behind their children, or, the parent(s) arrange for illicit human smuggling organi?zations to smuggle their children into the United States. In either case, the children arriving at or between ports of entry entering the United States without their parents or legal guardians are processed as unaccompanied alien children (UAC) upon apprehension and, pursuant to the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), not OHS, has the sole statutory authority and obligation to provide for the care and custody of such children and to seek reunification with their parents or suitable sponsors in the United States. I am aware that ICE does have an Online Detainee Locator System to help family members locate individuals in immigration custody.3. If you are confirmed, will you report to me whether OHS is currently drafting or considering a policy to separate families at the border?Nielsen: If confirmed, I commit to sharing additional policy guidance and appropriate information with Congress.4. Will you commit to review what procedures exist when U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) makes such a decision (i.e., reviews, opportunity for parents to be represented in challenging a separation)?Nielsen: I will.Senator Harris voted against confirming Nielsen’s appointment.*****************************************************November 17, 2017BuzzFeed News reporter Alfredo Flores reports that Jose Demar Fuentes, an immigrant from El Salvador who crossed the US border with his 1-year-old son at the Tijuana point of entry on November 12, seeking asylum, has accused immigration agents of lying and threatening him to persuade him to separate from his son. “Immigrant rights advocates,” Flores wrote, “said the accusation bolsters what they believe is an effort by Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to discourage Central American immigration by separating parents from their children.”*****************************************************November 25, 2017Houston Chronicle reporter Lomi Kriel reports on Trump administration moves to end “catch and release,” which would (as a consequence of the change in policy) remove children from parents who cross border: ““The Houston Chronicle has identified 22 cases since June in which parents … with no history of immigration violations were prosecuted for the misdemeanor crime of improper entry and had their children removed. … The broad prosecution of parents is at odds with what CBP [Customs and Border Protection] has said publicly about its policy.”Kriel noted that “once parents and children are separated, it can be extraordinarily difficult to reunite them” and that the agencies responsible for this lack comprehensive procedures to track families.These difficulties would become manifest in ensuing months.*****************************************************December 11, 2017The Women’s Refugee Commission and several other advocacy groups file a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accusing the agency of separating an increasing number of families at the border. The complaint asks DHS to investigate and clarify the agency’s policies on family separation and commit to preventing the practiceThe complaint (in the form of a letter addressed to Cameron Quinn, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Department of Homeland Security, and John V. Kelly, Acting Inspector General, Department of Homeland Security) documented 155 cases of family separation, including ninety in the last quarter of 2017. The separated migrants had come from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico, and Guatemala."Our organizations have for years and in great detail documented the immense trauma created by the separation of family members and the impact of separation on their ability to pursue legal immigration relief," the letter stated. "The separation of parents from their children at the U.S.-Mexico border and within the United States, absent justifiable child protection grounds, is so fundamentally unconscionable it defies countless international and domestic laws on child welfare, human rights, and refugees."*****************************************************December 21, 2017The New York Times and The Washington Post report that a family separation policy is again under consideration by the Trump administration and that, in fact (as had already been noted in the Houston Chronicle article of November 25) some families were already being separated.According to the Times, the move was “meant to discourage border crossings, but immigrant groups have denounced it as draconian and inhumane. … The policy under discussion would send parents to adult detention facilities, while their children would be placed in shelters designed for juveniles or with a ‘sponsor.’ … even without a formal change in policy, immigrant advocates say that families are already being separated on occasion.”Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission in New York City, said, “It interferes with due process, and is really just cruel. Children feel that they are being abandoned, literally being ripped out of their parents’ arms.”The Washington Post noted that the new measures would use data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to target parents for deportation after they attempt to regain custody of their children from government shelters. “The most contentious proposal -- to separate families in detention -- would keep adults in federal custody while sending their children to HHS shelters.”The measures were described by Trump administration officials, the Post noted, as designed to discourage Central American families from embarking on a journey to the border.*****************************************************January 16, 2018Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee.Senator Dianne Feinstein referenced recent reports that DHS was continuing to consider a practice of separating children from parents when apprehended at the border. “Candidly, woman to woman, I can't believe that, and I hope you will clarify," Feinstein said. "Not only would such a systemic policy infringe on the constitutional rights of parents. It is also callous and stunningly un-American. …. The America I know does not rip small children from their parents, and I can't imagine the fear that a small child would feel if this would happen. And for what? Because the child had no part in this."Nielsen replied that DHS has "not made any policy decisions" on the topic.*****************************************************January 30, 2018“The second pillar [of our plan for immigration reform] fully secures the border. That means building a wall on the Southern border, and it means hiring more heroes … to keep our communities safe. Crucially, our plan closes the terrible loopholes exploited by criminals and terrorists to enter our country -- and it finally ends the dangerous practice of “catch and release.”-- President Trump, State of the Union Address, January 30, 2018 *****************************************************February 8, 2018Seventy-five Democratic congressmembers, in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen express “profound concern” with the department’s practice of separating immigrant families, both in the United States and at the U.S.-Mexico border, noting that the practice “traumatizes those seeking humanitarian relief and limits their ability to lawfully pursue legal relief.”*****************************************************February 20, 2018The policy of separating immigrant parents and children to discourage migration by others is reported on by The Los Angeles Times. The article notes that parents in El Paso, Texas were separated from their children in January and detained: “Homeland Security won't say it is targeting families but does say it is making procedural and policy changes to deter illegal immigration.” Tyler Houlton, a Homeland Security spokesman, was quoted as saying, ‘The administration is committed to using all legal tools at its disposal to secure our nation's borders."*****************************************************March 9, 2018The American Civil Liberties Union files a class-action lawsuit accusing the Trump administration of separating hundreds of immigrant parents and children who are seeking asylum “for no legitimate reason" in violation of federal law and the due process clause."Whether or not the Trump administration wants to call this a 'policy,' it certainly is engaged in a widespread practice of tearing children away from their parents," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement.* * *One of the plaintiffs named in the ACLU’s class action suit arrived with her 7-year-old daughter in the fall of 2017 from the Republic of Congo seeking asylum. ACLU lawyers representing the women claimed that when she arrived in San Diego with her daughter, customs officers determined that the woman did have the “significant possibility” of ultimately receiving asylum and allowed her to move on to the next step of the process.“[The woman] and her daughter … were detained together. Four days later, however, [the woman’s] child was taken from her. With no explanation, the government removed [the child] from the detention center where [the woman] was held and moved her 2,000 miles away to a facility in Chicago, with the little girl frantically screaming that she did not want to leave her mommy. The government has never alleged that [the child] would not be safe with her mother, or that [the mother] is not a fit parent.”*****************************************************March 22, 2018U.S. Senator Dick Durbin and Senate colleagues issue a statement calling for the Acting Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security to investigate allegations that DHS is separating the children of asylum-seekers from their parents.* * *statement by the American Psychological Association:“This is reportedly only one of many recent cases in which DHS has separated children from their parents who are seeking asylum. According to one analysis, at least 155 such cases were identified as of October 2017. Reports further indicate that DHS may soon formalize a policy of detaining children of asylum-seekers separately from their parents. This would be an unacceptable breach of our legal and humanitarian obligations to innocents who are fleeing war and terrorism,” the Senators wrote in a letter to DHS Acting Inspector General John Kelly.The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association have both condemned the separation of families in immigration detention. As the American Academy of Pediatrics found: “Studies of detained immigrants have shown that children and parents may suffer negative physical and emotional symptoms from detention, including anxiety, depression and posttraumatic stress disorder. When children live in fear for prolonged periods of time, they may develop toxic stress, which causes harm to the developing brain and can result in short and long-term health consequences.”*****************************************************April 6, 2018President Trump signs a memorandum ordering an end to the policy known as “catch and release.” Under the policy, illegal immigrants are released from detention while awaiting a court hearing.The New York Times reported that “The directive does not, on its own, toughen immigration policy or take concrete steps to do so; it merely directs officials to report to the president about steps they are taking to “expeditiously end ‘catch and release’ practices.” But it is a symbolic move by Mr. Trump to use his executive action to solve a problem that he has bitterly complained Congress will not. … The memo appears intended to prod the administration to move more rapidly in cracking down on unauthorized immigrants at the border, a goal laid out in an executive order Mr. Trump issued last year during his first week in office.”* * *Attorney General Jeff Sessions orders the implementation of a "zero tolerance" policy for migrants caught crossing the border outside authorized entry points:Attorney General Jeff Sessions today notified all U.S. Attorney’s Offices along the Southwest Border of a new “zero-tolerance policy” for offenses under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a), which prohibits both attempted illegal entry and illegal entry into the United States by an alien. The implementation of the Attorney General’s zero-tolerance policy comes as the Department of Homeland Security reported a 203 percent increase in illegal border crossings from March 2017 to March 2018, and a 37 percent increase from February 2018 to March 2018. …“The situation at our Southwest Border is unacceptable. Congress has failed to pass effective legislation that serves the national interest--that closes dangerous loopholes and fully funds a wall along our southern border. As a result, a crisis has erupted at our Southwest Border that necessitates an escalated effort to prosecute those who choose to illegally cross our border,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “To those who wish to challenge the Trump Administration’s commitment to public safety, national security, and the rule of law, I warn you: illegally entering this country will not be rewarded, but will instead be met with the full prosecutorial powers of the Department of Justice.VOA News’s Masood Farivar wrote: “The new policy is the latest initiative Sessions has announced as part of what he last year termed the ‘Trump era’ in immigration enforcement.”*****************************************************April 11, 2018Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies before the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee that there is no policy that calls for the separation of families as a deterrence. Her testimony was covered by CNN:The Trump administration separates immigrant families only when it's necessary to protect the children, the secretary of homeland security said Wednesday [April 11], though she added that in at least one case the process "took too long." …... Nielsen said … at a hearing of the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee that there is no policy that encourages the separation of parents from their children as a punitive or deterrence measure -- and it happens only when there is doubt about whether an adult may really be a parent or legal guardian of the child they're with or when the child might be in danger."The standard is to -- in every case -- is to keep that family together as long as operationally possible," Nielsen said. "When we separate, we separate because the law tells us to, and that is in the interest of the child. ... Unfortunately, we have seen instances where traffickers have used children to cross the border and gain access illegally."*****************************************************April 16, 2018The Homeland Security department’s acting inspector general, John V. Kelly, will look into whether the agency is improperly separating families, CNN reports. The move comes after Democratic senators urged the office to open an investigation. (See March 22, above.)*****************************************************April 20, 2018A New York Times story says that more than 700 children have been taken from their parents since October 2017, one hundred of these under the age of 4. It is the first report to call attention to the scale of separations: “Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which processes migrants at the border, initially denied that the numbers were so high. But after they were confirmed to The Times by three federal officials who work closely with these cases, a spokesman for the health and human services department on Friday acknowledged in a statement that there were ‘approximately 700.’ … Once a child has entered the shelter system, there is no firm process to determine whether they have been separated from someone who was legitimately their parent, or for reuniting parents and children who had been mistakenly separated, said a Border Patrol official, who was not authorized to discuss the agency’s policies publicly.”*****************************************************April 23, 2018In a memo to Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that was obtained by The Washington Post, DHS officials -- acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services L. Francis Cissna and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan -- urge criminal prosecution of parents crossing border with children, the Post ‘s Maria Sacchetti reports. Sacchetti noted that this “stark change in policy … would result in the separation of families that until now have mostly been kept together. If approved, the zero-tolerance measure could split up thousands of families.”The memo said the Trump administration had tried this approach in the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which covers West Texas and New Mexico, between July 2017 and November 2017.In a statement, Homeland Security spokeswoman Katie Waldman said the agency “is looking at all options in conjunction with the Attorney General’s zero tolerance policy for those illegally crossing the border. We will not comment further on internal deliberations. Again, DHS does not have a policy of separating families at the border for deterrence purposes. DHS does, however, have a legal obligation to protect the best interests of the child whether that be from human smugglings, drug traffickers, or nefarious actors who knowingly break our immigration laws and put minor children at risk.”*****************************************************May 7, 2018In separate speeches in Scottsdale, Arizona and Diego, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announces that the implementation of a zero tolerance policy at the Southwest border: “[T]he Department of Homeland Security is now referring 100 percent of illegal Southwest Border crossings to the Department of Justice for prosecution. And the Department of Justice will take up those cases.”Attorney General Sessions (excerpting and combining remarks from the two speeches):Today we are here to send a message to the world: we are not going to let this country be overwhelmed.People are not going to caravan or otherwise stampede our border.We need legality and integrity in the system.That’s why the Department of Homeland Security is now referring 100 percent of illegal Southwest Border crossings to the Department of Justice for prosecution. And the Department of Justice will take up those cases. This Department, under President Trump’s leadership, is enforcing the law without exception.I have put in place a “zero tolerance” policy for illegal entry on our Southwest border. If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It’s that simple.If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you.If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don’t like that, then don’t smuggle children over our border.”These actions are … made even more necessary by the massive increases in illegal crossings in recent months. …The American people … to want a safe, secure border and a government that knows who is here and who isn’t.Donald Trump ran for office on that idea. I believe that is a big reason why he won. He is on fire about this. This entire government knows it. …We have to have limits. And Congress has already set them.And if you want to change our laws, then pass a bill in Congress. Persuade your fellow citizens to your point of view.* * *Appearing at the same press conference in San Diego, with Sessions, Thomas Homan, outgoing deputy director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement said: "I want to be clear. DHS does not have a blanket policy on separating families as a deterrent. There is no new policy. This has always been the policy. But you will see more prosecutions because of the commitment to zero tolerance" of illegal border entries.”* * *CNN reported that the Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen officially enacted the zero tolerance policy a few days before, “according to a Department of Homeland Security official speaking on condition of anonymity. … by referring immigrants caught illegally crossing for criminal charges, the move means adults coming across the border with children will be separated from those children as they await their criminal proceedings.* * *The Los Angeles Times called the new policy “draconian.” “It … could put thousands more immigrants in detention facilities and children in shelters.”*****************************************************May 8, 2018The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a statement denouncing the DHS initiative:The Academy is opposing federal efforts that will separate parents and children crossing the country’s southwest border illegally.AAP President Colleen A. Kraft, M.D., M.B.A., FAAP, said she is outraged by the “sweeping cruelty” of dividing immigrant families who often are fleeing for their lives.“The new policy is the latest example of harmful actions by the Department of Homeland Security against immigrant families, hindering their right to seek asylum in our country and denying parents the right to remain with their children,” she said in a statement. …“Separating children from their parents contradicts everything we stand for as pediatricians -- protecting and promoting children’s health,” she said. … “We can and must remember that immigrant children are still children; they need our protection, not prosecution.”*****************************************************May 9, 2018The Washington Post reports on a working draft, dated April 20, by the Department of Homeland, in partnership with the Justice Department, of modified regulations for the detention of migrant children:The draft regulations signal that the Trump administration is considering detaining families for longer periods and subjecting unaccompanied minors to increased scrutiny that could make it easier to deport them. They would allow officials to separate parents and children if holding them together would place an ‘undue burden’ on government operations. … The regulations … would [effectively replace] a 1997 consent decree [the Flores Settlement, aka Flores Settlement Agreement] … along with two more recent federal laws [applicable to the detention of migrant children]. … Under the … Flores Settlement Agreement [governing existing rules], the government has up to five days to transfer children detained i*n a Homeland Security facility to a family residential facility, where they would stay with their parents. The Trump administration would replace the five-day transfer deadline with the more ambiguous standard of “as expeditiously as possible.”*****************************************************May 11, 2018White House Chief of Staff John Kelly (previously Secretary of Homeland Security) is interviewed by NPR’s John Burnett. Excerpts from the transcript follow:Finally, to immigration. You were only at DHS for about six months. But you had a consequential time there. Aggressive enforcement was begun right after the president came into office. Are you still interested in border security and immigration from your perch here?Yeah, I mean it's not something I think about as much as when I was at DHS. But you know when I was at DHS, I certainly carried the same point of view and that is we have immigration laws. We have border protection laws that are simply ignored or have been ignored. …Are you in favor of this new move announced by the attorney general early this week that if you cross the border illegally even if you're a mother with your children [we're going] to arrest you? We're going to prosecute you, we're going to send your kids to a juvenile shelter?[T]he vast majority of the people that move illegally into United States are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not MS-13. Some of them are not. But they're also not people that would easily assimilate into the United States into our modern society. They're overwhelmingly rural people in the countries they come from – fourth, fifth, sixth grade educations are kind of the norm. They don't speak English, obviously that's a big thing. They don't speak English. They don't integrate well, they don't have skills. They're not bad people. They're coming here for a reason. And I sympathize with the reason. But the laws are the laws. But a big name of the game is deterrence.Family separation stands as a pretty tough deterrent.It could be a tough deterrent -- would be a tough deterrent. A much faster turnaround on asylum seekers.Even though people say that's cruel and heartless to take a mother away from her children?I wouldn't put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of -- put into foster care or whatever. But the big point is they elected to come illegally into the United States and this is a technique that no one hopes will be used extensively or for very long.*****************************************************May 15, 2018Testifying before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen emphasizes that separating families was not the aim but merely the effect of a decision to step up prosecutions of those who cross the border illegally. “We do not have a policy to separate children from their parents. Our policy is, if you break the law we will prosecute you,” she said.*****************************************************May 29, 2018Statements by senior White House officials defending implementation of the family separation policy are reported by Houston Chronicle reporter Lomi Kriel. The officials sought to place the blame for what they called a “crisis” at the border to Democrats who, they said, would not support changing laws that, in the view of the Trump administration, encourage families from Central America seeking asylum to emigrate.“If we had those fixes in federal law, the migration crisis from Central America would largely be solved in a very short time,” Stephen Miller, adviser to the president on immigration policy, said. “Families would be able to be kept together and sent home safely and expeditiously. … The surge in illegal border crossings and the threat that puts to Americans’ safety and children’s safety obviously required zero-tolerance policy for illegal entry. A nation cannot have a principle that there will be no civil or criminal immigration enforcement for somebody traveling with a child.”A Justice Department spokesman, Devin O’ Malley, said that the administration is simply enforcing current law by prosecuting everyone who crosses the border illegally, including parents with children. “They will not be given a free pass,” he said. “It is unprecedented not to pursue prosecution of federal law because someone has a child.”*****************************************************June 3, 2018U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley visits Custom and Border Protection’s Border Station in McAllen, Texas, a facility where families are separated as they enter the U.S. He also attempted to visit Casa Padre, a shelter for unaccompanied or separated children in the custody of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement located in Brownsville, Texas, but was refused entry.“This cruel treatment of children and families arriving to the U.S. is completely un-American and unacceptable,” Merkley said in a statement. “Americans should be outraged by the fact that our taxpayer dollars are being used to inflict spiteful and traumatizing policies on innocent children. The Trump administration’s vicious, heartless family separation policy must be stopped. President Trump should end this policy immediately -- and any Republican who claims to embrace ‘family values’ must step up to oppose this cruel anti-family agenda.”*****************************************************June 5, 2018In an interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Devin O'Malley, a Justice Department spokesman attempts to explain the rationale for the Trump administration's family separation policy.MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:Let's turn now to the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border and the Trump administration's zero tolerance crackdown on people who cross into the U.S. illegally. U.S. officials say they are detaining and prosecuting every person caught and separating children from their parents.We're going to hear next from a defender of this policy. … Devin O'Malley [a] spokesman for the Department of Justice.Let me start with the stated goal of this policy. The Trump administration says the goal is deterrence. Is there evidence that people are being deterred?DEVIN O’MALLEY: Sure. Well, so let's step back first. So in April -- at the beginning of April, the attorney general announced a zero tolerance policy where the Department of Justice, the U.S. attorneys offices along the southwest border would prosecute every case of illegal entry that was referred to them by the Department of Homeland Security. The following month, the homeland June security secretary announced a policy where they would refer a hundred percent of their apprehensions to the Department of Justice. So this policy has only been in effect for about a month, and we believe that long-term -- that we will see a deterrent effect of this policy. …MARY LOUISE KELLY: Safe to say that these zero tolerance policies -- the separating parents from their children, deploying the National Guard troops at the border -- they're not having an immediate effect.DEVIN O’MALLEY: I think that it's too early to tell. …But listen … we have very high levels of people attempting to enter the country illegally, and we believe that we are taking the appropriate measures to get back down to low levels.MARY LOUISE KELLY: Let me turn you to another point, a key point that critics of this policy make, which is that it is cruel. Here's Cecilia Munoz speaking to NPR last week. She was President Obama's point person on immigration.CECILIA MUNOZ [soundbite of archived broadcast]: It is just outrageous to suggest that we can come up with decent care for kids when they're being separated from their parents. … I don't have words for how reprehensible that policy is.MARY LOUISE KELLY: Devin O'Malley, setting aside for the moment whether this policy will prove an effective tool or not to deter illegal immigration, is it cruel?DEVIN O’MALLEY: I think the attorney general in this administration has been very clear that if people who wish to flee persecution in their countries, whether it be Central America or elsewhere, they have the opportunity to arrive at ports of entry or visit consulates in Mexico. They also have the opportunity to seek asylum in Mexico.MARY LOUISE KELLY: He's made the case if you don't want to be separated from your children, don't try to enter the U.S. illegally. But my question is -- is this in the best interest of these children?DEVIN O’MALLEY: Well, I do want to be clear that this is not really a choice. The government does not have a choice. When someone illegally enters the country, the United States Marshals Service cannot place a child in a criminal detention facility with their parent. And this is the same policy and process that is applied to anyone who is charged with a crime across the United States irrespective of immigration status.MARY LOUISE KELLY: But to stick with this specific immigration crackdown, do you believe the law requires separating children from their parents?DEVIN O’MALLEY: I do. If we are to have...MARY LOUISE KELLY: But the law hasn't changed, and the Obama administration chose a radically different interpretation of what this law requires the U.S. government to do.DEVIN O’MALLEY: [L]et me unpack that. First, I think if you look at the practices of the Obama administration, there were times when they did separate families. This is something that has been done for many years. And for decades, illegally entering this country has been in violation of federal statute. That is the law that Congress gave us.MARY LOUISE KELLY: Although you yourself just described this as new rules that have only been in effect for a few weeks.DEVIN O’MALLEY: Well, the zero tolerance policy...MARY LOUISE KELLY: This is a new -- this a different way of interpreting the policy than the Trump administration was at the beginning of this year. … I'm trying to square when you say this is -- the law requires you to do a certain thing. The law hasn't changed, and yet these are new rules that have been put into effect so recently that you say it's too soon to tell whether they will be effective or not.DEVIN O’MALLEY: Well, the zero tolerance policy across all of the U.S. attorneys districts in the United States is a new policy. It's a new policy as of April 6, 2018. There were variations of zero tolerance that were implemented in the prior administration in certain sectors along the border. But this was not a policy that they implemented across the southwest border, if that helps clarify.MARY LOUISE KELLY: So you're arguing there's no discretion. The law demands you to separate families in this way.DEVIN O’MALLEY: Congress made it illegal for a person to enter the United States between a port of entry, and the Department of Justice, through their zero tolerance policy, is prosecuting a hundred percent of those cases to the extent practical. When that happens, when there is a family unit, when the adult is charged with criminal illegal entry, the United States Marshals are not authorized by Congress to place that child in a criminal detention facility with their families, so it does require of the federal government to place the child in the care and custody of the Department of Health and Human Services.MARY LOUISE KELLY: Last question, and it's a practical one - if an adult is caught, is processed, is deported, what is the Justice Department doing to make sure that the child also goes back, that the child is reunited with their family? I'm asking because we're speaking with activists and human rights groups working with people on the border saying they're looking at children who've -- who were waiting months to go home, to be reunited with their parents.DEVIN O’MALLEY: Well, I can't speak to those examples without knowing which ones they are. I know as a matter of practice, when an adult makes their way through the criminal prosecution process, they usually plead guilty to illegal entry, and they are generally sentenced to time served. And then when applicable, that process of reunification is started. And, you know, frankly, the administration is working with a number of laws and court orders that make it difficult to facilitate that reunification. But it is always done and attempted to be done, and that is the ultimate goal - to reunify families.* * *Attorney General Sessions is interviewed by conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.TRANSCRIPTHUGH HEWITT: Is it absolutely necessary, General, to separate parents from children when they are detained or apprehended at the border?JEFF SESSIONS: Yes. What’s happening is we are having more people coming bringing children with them entering between the ports of entry, between the ports of entry illegally, and they’re not, you cannot give them immunity. That’s an offense. We believe every person that enters the country illegally like that should be prosecuted. And you can’t be giving immunity to people who bring children with them recklessly and improperly and illegally. They should never do that. And so those children are being well taken care of. Within 72 hours, they’re taken to the Health and Human Services to be sure they’re properly cared for. And those persons will have, the adults will be prosecuted like the law requires.HUGH HEWITT: I understand the prosecution part. But is it necessary to separate the children? Could they not be detained in facilities where at least mothers and infants could remain together?JEFF SESSIONS: Well, most are not infants. Most are teenagers, although we do have a number of younger ones now, more than we’ve seen recently. And they are maintained in a very safe environment not by the law enforcement team at Homeland Security, but put with Health and Human Services. And they are kept close by, and if the person pleads guilty, they would be deported promptly, and they can take their children with them. And, but we do, the Homeland Security can only keep these children for 72 hours before they go to Health and Human Services.HUGH HEWITT: But General, what I’m pressing on, because I’m disturbed by this. I don’t think children should be separated from biological parents at any age, but especially if they’re infants and toddlers. I think it’s traumatic and terribly difficult on the child. Is it absolutely necessary to do so? Can’t we have facilities where parents remain united with kids?JEFF SESSIONS: Well, we can, we’d be glad to work at that, and actually, to keep them as close as possible, and then they’re deported. But the law requires us to keep children in a different facility than we do for adults. And every time somebody, Hugh, gets prosecuted in America for a crime, American citizens, and they go to jail, they’re separated from their children. We don’t want to do this at all. If people don’t want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We’ve got to get this message out. You’re not given immunity. You have to, you will be prosecuted if you bring, if you come illegally. And if you bring children, you’ll still be prosecuted.HUGH HEWITT: I understand the deterrent, and I understand there are 2.7 million children in America with a parent who’s incarcerated and are separated. But if it’s possible to build detention facilities, because these people have not been adjudicated guilty, they’re under suspicion, could we not provide…I spent 17 years in Orange County working on children and families issues trying to keep people who fell into homelessness together with their children because of the impact on children, Mr. Attorney General. Surely, you’ll agree that’s a terrible thing for a child, isn’t it?JEFF SESSIONS: Well, it is, but this is not like somebody getting ten years in jail. I mean, these are often within days. Now if they get into a prolonged asylum process, the children are then turned over to some sort of family that is to take care of them while the adult may be in trial. But basically, the adults are frequently getting bail, too, and be able to be with their children. So it’s not, it’s certainly not our goal to separate children, but I do think it’s clear, it’s legitimate to warn people who come to the country unlawfully bringing children with them that they can’t expect that they’ll always be kept together. … We don’t have the capacity now to do it.HUGH HEWITT: Have you, Mr. Attorney General, visited any of those facilities?JEFF SESSIONS: I have not visited them. Those are within the ambit of the Homeland Security and the Health and Human Services. But I believe for the most part they’re well taken care of. … We need to get this border under control. We need better, we’re going to see some new legislation through Congress, and we want to send a message to the world that if you want to come to America, make your application and wait your turn.HUGH HEWITT: You know, I’m a conservative. I’m for the border fence. I’m for a double long sided border fence, and have been since before President Trump was for it. But I do care about these kids, and I’m worried about abuse and neglect in large-scale facilities, you know, beadle [Mr. Bumble], from Oliver Twist, if you remember the guy who ran that, and I’ve got Dickensian visions of these facilities. And no one I know has been there, including you. Aren’t you worried? … Mr. Attorney General, are you a grandfather?JEFF SESSIONS: Yes, I am.HUGH HEWITT: Can you imagine your grandchildren separated from your children for a period of 72 hours or even longer in a dormitory with up to, the deputy secretary told me, 1,000 other children and the impact on them of that?JEFF SESSIONS: Hugh, you can’t, the United States can’t be a total guarantor that every parent who comes to the country unlawfully with a child is guaranteed that they won’t be, is guaranteed that they will be able to have their hand on that child the entire time. That’s just not the way it works.HUGH HEWITT: But we’re the United States of…JEFF SESSIONS: I agree with you that I wish the system would allow for that. I wish we could afford to do that. And maybe we’ll head in that direction. I certainly think that would be preferable if we could do so. But the law says that parents who come unlawfully are subject to prosecution. And the law says we must carefully take care of any children that come, and they must be held not by the law enforcement branch, but held by our Health and Human Services branch to ensure they’re properly taken care of.HUGH HEWITT: Would you recommend to the President an executive order that says construct facilities that allow parents in detention to remain with their minor children, at least those who are under the age of 15 or 16, especially toddlers and infants, because we’re the United States of America. We can afford to build these sorts of facilities. And I, by the way, agree with zero tolerance for people who aren’t asylum seekers or refugees.JEFF SESSIONS: Yeah.HUGH HEWITT: But we can afford this, and it’s so inhuman to take children away from their parents.JEFF SESSIONS: Well, it is a tough thing when children, always tough to separate children from their parents, of course. But it happens, sadly, every day when people go to jail in America.*****************************************************June 11, 2018The CUT, a New York magazine site, reports that since October 2017 “an estimated 1,358 children have been ripped away from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border -- a cruel practice that has become increasingly common in the past month, as the Trump administration attempts to deter families from crossing.”*****************************************************June 12, 2018Sandra Hernandez and her two-year-old daughter Yanela, migrants from Honduras, are searched and detained by a Border Patrol agent near the U.S.-Mexico border. Yanela had just been set on the ground so her mother could be searched; she was screaming. She was photographed by John Moore, a photographer for Getty Images. The Moore photograph went viral. It was said to be reminiscent of a photograph that an Associated P+ress photographer took of a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl fleeing a napalm attack in 1972. The cover of the July 2 issue of Time magazine featured a picture of Yanela crying and looking up at President Donald Trump (a composite photo using Moore’s of image the girl). The cover read: “Welcome to America.”*****************************************************June 13, 2018A group of journalists, including NBC News’s Jacob Soboroff, are accorded a first ever visit to Casa Padre, a shelter for unaccompanied or separated children in Brownsville, Texas/“Life inside the biggest licensed child care facility in the nation for children brought into the U.S. illegally looks more like incarceration than temporary shelter,” Soboroff reported. “The children … spend 22 hours per day during the week (21 hours on weekends) locked inside a converted former Walmart, packing five into rooms built for four.”Journalists were asked not to speak with the boys in the shelter.*****************************************************June 14, 2018Attorney General Jeff Sessions, in a speech to police officers in Fort Wayne, Indiana, defends the family separation policy by citing a Biblical passage:Let me take an aside to discuss concerns raised by our church friends about separating families. Many of the criticisms raised in recent days are not fair or logical and some are contrary to law.… illegal entry into the United States is a crime--as it should be. Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order.Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful.Our policies that can result in short term separation of families is not unusual or unjustified. American citizens that are jailed do not take their children to jail with them. And non-citizens who cross our borders unlawfully --between our ports of entry--with children are not an exception.They are the ones who broke the law, they are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek. The United States on the other hand, goes to extraordinary lengths to protect them while the parents go through a short detention period. …The problem is that it became well known that adults with children were not being prosecuted for unlawful entry and the numbers surged from 15,000 in 2013 to 75,000 four years later. That policy was a declaration of open borders for family units. …Some people in the media have chosen to attack us for enforcing the law. That doesn’t surprise me. But I’m not ashamed of the United States of America. I am not going to apologize for carrying out our laws. That is my duty.* * *Interviewed after Sessions’s speech, House Speaker Paul Ryan says he is not comfortable with family separations. (His sentiments were echoed by other Republican lawmakers.) "No I am not [comfortable with the policy]," Ryan responded. "We believe it should be addressed in immigration legislation."We don't want kids to be separated from their parents."Ryan and other GOP lawmakers said they were seeking to resolve the problem in a compromise immigration bill. He claimed that the family separation policy was being dictated by a court ruling (the Flores settlement) that prevents children who enter the country illegally from being held in custody for long periods.* * *House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, in her weekly press conference, was asked about Ryan’s remarks:Q: Leader Pelosi, Speaker Ryan just said that he's not comfortable with the separation of children and their parents at the border and he said that legislation is the best way to change that. Do you agree with him, that legislation is the best approach? And have you talked to him about that legislation and a possible timeline?PELOSI: No. Let me say this. First of all, this was an act of the Administration. They have been planning this for a while.As a mother of five children, grandmother of nine, I'm sure any parent here, mother or father, knows that this is barbaric. This is not what America is. But this is the policy of the Trump Administration. And they put down this practice and they take it back.And what they say to me is, ‘These mothers should never have taken their children across the desert, so they broke the law trying to get them into the U.S. So they're criminals. We're separating their children from their parents.’Do they have any idea the impact on families, on children? Well, maybe they do, maybe they don't, maybe they don't care. But the fact is they should know, and they should lift this policy that they've put down.They've been cooking it up for a while. Never mind to them when we say these moms took these children, these parents took these children to escape possible death, rape, gang violence where they live, and they have no alternative but to try to seek asylum in the United States.No, they know better. They said these words. We know better. We know how to take care of children. We're taking them away from their parent. We'll put them in foster homes or someplace. …Think of the stress of these children. They take a baby away from a nursing mother. They tell someone we're going to give a baby a shower, a bath, and they take the baby, put them in a car seat and drive them away. This is not normal. In fact, it's barbaric. It has to stop.Now, what they are saying is, ‘Well, we'll find a way not to separate them.’ One of their ways not to separate the children is not to let them even seek asylum, which is a right that people have in the world, to seek asylum.That's not a solution. The solution is not to tear children from their parents. Don't stick peas up your nose. Don't stick a stick in your ear. What is it that they don't get about how stupid and wrong and immoral [this is]? …They close by saying: ‘While protecting our borders is important, we can and must do better as a government, and as a society, to find other ways to ensure that safety. Separating babies from their mothers is not the answer and is immoral.’So the casual attitude that they're having about, ‘oh, no, we don't like that, the Administration,’ they can weigh in with the Administration and stop it on a dime and not wait for some concoction that really doesn't address the immorality of our lack of asylum.* * *At a White House briefing, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders is pressed by CNN's Jim Acosta on whether she agrees with Sessions's assertion:JIM ACOSTA; “On these children who are being separated from their families as they come across the border. The Attorney General earlier today said that somehow there is a justification for this in the Bible. Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?"SARAH SANDERS: "I'm not aware of the Attorney General's comments or what he would be referencing. I can say that it is very Biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible. … [T]he separation of illegal [hesitation; then Sanders uses the following word] alien families is the product of the same legal loopholes that Democrats refuse to close, and these laws are the same that have been on the books for over a decade, and the President is simply enforcing them."ACOSTA: “[inaudible] a moral policy to take children away from their parents. Can you imagine the horror that these children must be going through when they come across the border and they are with their parents, and then suddenly they’re pulled away from their parents? Why is the government doing this?”SANDERS: “Because it’s the law, and that’s what the law states.”ACOSTA: “You guys don’t have to do that. It’s your policy.”SANDERS: "You’re right. It doesn't have to be the law. The President has actually called on Democrats in Congress to fix those loopholes. The Democrats have failed to come to the table, failed to help this president close these loopholes and fix this problem. We don't want this to be a problem. The president has tried to address it on a number of occasions. We've laid out a proposal and Democrats simply refuse to do their job and tix the problem."* * *A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson is quoted by Time stating that the Trump administration’s hard-line policy can be defended on the grounds that the government regularly incarcerates American-born criminals with children. “If you commit a crime, the police will take you to jail--regardless if you have a family or not,” the spokesperson said.*****************************************************June 15, 2018For the first time, the Department of Homeland Security says how many children have been separated during the zero-tolerance initiative. In a call with reporters, a DHS spokesman says that 1,995 children were separated from 1,940 adults from April 19, 2018 to May 31. (The zero tolerance policy was officially announced in April.)NBC News:“In a briefing with reporters on Friday [June 15], DHS officials complained of exaggerated and inaccurate reports about the policy, taking particular issue with a CNN report that a mother had her infant child taken from her arms while she was breastfeeding.”DHS officials also said they had "no choice" but to separate parents and children at the border.“Pressed on this claim, they said the only alternative option was to ignore the law, though previous administrations have used other methods to keep migrant families together while they wound their way through immigration court proceedings.“The officials could not say whether parents were allowed to say goodbye to their parents [sic] before they are separated. Some reports have said parents are told their children are being taken to a separate facility for a bath.”* * *“I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law,” President Trump says to a group of reporters in an impromptu press conference on the White House lawn.***************************************************June 16, 2018The New York Times reports that ‘inside the Trump administration, current and former officials say, there is considerable unease about the [family separation] policy, which is regarded by some charged with carrying it out as unfeasible in practice and questionable morally. Kirstjen Nielsen, the current homeland security secretary, has clashed privately with Mr. Trump over the practice.” …”The Times article quotes Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser and the main architect of the president’s immigration agenda. “No nation can have the policy that whole classes of people are immune from immigration law or enforcement,” Miller said in an interview. “It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law.”*****************************************************June 17, 2018On June 17, Father’s Day, several Democratic lawmakers visit the Custom and Border Protection’s Border Station in McAllen, Texas. According to a news story by Sean Sullivan in The Washington Post, “The migrant children, some confused or expressionless, watched as uniformed officials led reporters on a brief tour Sunday of a processing center and temporary detention facility here. Some 1,100 undocumented individuals were being held, including nearly 200 unaccompanied minors.”“Detainees are being kept in bare-bones cells surrounded by tall metal fencing inside a sprawling facility with high ceilings. The facility resembled a large warehouse divided into cage-like structures. …”“Officials took away the shoelaces of the undocumented immigrants, fearful about the safety of those in custody.”“One woman fought back tears as she spoke to reporters. One child clutched a water bottle and a bag of chips. Several of the detainees wrapped themselves in the foil blankets as they sat on benches, the ground, or on modest mattress pads on the floor of the cells.”The lawmakers later traveled to Brownsville, Texas to tour Casa Padre, a children’s shelter housing children age 10 and older. Officials prevented the lawmakers from talking to the children.“President Trump could end this cruel and inhumane policy right now,” Senator Chris Van Hollen tweeted. “It’s Father’s Day. He should take the opportunity to do it today.”Van Hollen said the lawmakers spoke to a mother whose daughter was separated from her in the processing center. “She’s being charged with illegal entry. Under the new policy, they will deliberately separate -- deliberately separate -- moms and dads from their sons and daughters,” he said, adding: “This is a choice that the Trump administration has made. It is inhumane. It is cruel.”Representative Sheila Jackson Lee said, “When you have a mother tell you directly that she’s in fear that she will never see her child again …. then you know that what we are saying today is, ‘President Trump, cease and desist.’ ““Officials said detainees have been given access to potable water and food, including three hot meals. Portable restrooms and water fountains were visible in the climate-controlled facility. One official said the immigrants also were given access to showers and clothing.”“One member of the Congressional delegation suggested that officials made things look presentable because of the planned visit.”“It was in anticipation of a congressional delegation, so you’ve got to begin with that premise,” Representative Vicente Gonzalez said in an interview. “It was orderly, but it was far from what I would call humane.”“The zero-tolerance policy means zero humanity and makes zero sense,” one of the visitors, Senator Jeff Merkley, said at a news conference following the tour.* * *In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, former first lady Laura Bush characterizes the Trump administration’s family separation policy as “cruel” and “immoral,” comparing it to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II.* * *Interviewed on Face the Nation, Senator Susan Collins says that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen had testified before the Senate that asylum seekers with families would not be separated if they presented themselves at a legal port of entry, "Yet, there are numerous credible media accounts showing that exactly that is happening, and the administration needs to put an end to that right off." Collins said.Later in the day Nielsen tweeted: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period."*****************************************************June 17-18, 2018Amid growing outrage over the practice of separating children from parents detained at the border and over conditions of their care, Fox News broadcasts include statements from prominent conservatives defending the Trump administration’s actions.On Sunday, June 17, conservative commentator Ann Coulter, in an appearance on The Next Revolution with Steve Hilton, said that migrant children photographed at detention facilities or otherwise in distress were child actors. “These child actors weeping and crying on all the other networks 24/7 right now; do not fall for it, Mr. President.” she said. “They’re given scripts to read by liberals. … Don’t fall for the actor children.”* * *On Monday, June 18, on her program “The Ingraham Angle,” Laura Ingraham called immigrant child detention centers “essentially summer camps.”“Since more illegal immigrants are rushing the border, more kids are being separated from their parents and temporarily housed in what are essentially summer camps, or as the San Diego Union-Tribune described them today as looking like basically boarding schools,” she said.Appearing on the same program, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said to Ingraham: ‘[W]e’re doing the right thing, we’re taking care of these children.”Ingraham noted that some opponents of the family separation policy had compared the practice to "concentration camps," while others had condemned it as a human rights violation.“Well it’s a real exaggeration,” Sessions said in response. “Of course in Nazi Germany, they were keeping the Jews from leaving the country,” Sessions said.*****************************************************June 18, 2018An audio recording obtained by the investigative news organization ProPublica, on which ten Central American children held in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility who had been taken away from their parents by immigration authorities at the border can be heard wailing and calling for their parents or a relative, is posted on ProPublica’s site.The recording was made at an unidentified detention center. The person who recorded the audio told ProPublica that the children on the recording were between four and 10 years old and had been held at the detention center for less than 24 hours.At a press briefing in Washington later that day (see below), Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen claimed not to have heard the audio though a reporter in the briefing room played the footage aloud.* * *Homeland Security secretary Nielsen discusses the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy in a White House press briefing. Her remarks were occasioned by the growing outcry over the forced separation of families apprehended at the border.She opened with a statement on the policy and then answered questions from reporters.EXCERPTS FROM NIELSEN’S STATEMENTWell, good afternoon. … I would love to see if I can help explain some of what is going on and give you some of the facts. …I want to provide you an update on the illegal immigration crisis on the southern border and the efforts the administration is taking to solve this crisis and to stop the flood of illegal immigrants, drugs, contraband and crime coming across the border.… in the last three months we’ve seen illegal immigration on our southern border exceed 50,000 people each month, multiples over each month last year. Since this time last year, there has been a 325 percent increase in unaccompanied alien children and a 435 percent increase in family units entering the country illegally.Over the last ten years, there has been a 1700 percent increase in asylum claims, resulting in asylum backlog of 600,000 cases. Since 2013, the United States has admitted more than half a million illegal immigrant minors and family units from Central America, most of whom today are at large in the United States. … This entire crisis … is not new. It is been occurring and expanded over many decades. But currently it is the exclusive product of loopholes in our federal immigration laws that prevent illegal immigrant minors and family members from being detained and removed to their home countries.In other words, these loopholes create a functionally open border. … We have repeatedly called on Congress to close the loopholes.Yet the voices most loudly criticizing the enforcement of our current laws are those whose policies created this crisis and whose policies perpetrate it. …… we need to amend the Flores Settlement Agreement and recent expansions which would allow for family detention during the removal process. And we need Congress to fully fund our ability to hold families together through the immigration process. And until these loopholes are closed by Congress, it is not possible as a matter of law to detain and remove whole family units who arrive illegally in the United States. Congress and the courts created this problem and congress alone can fix it.Until then, we will enforce every law we have on the books to defend the sovereignty and security of the United States. Those who criticize the enforcement of our laws have offered only one countermeasure: open borders, the quick release of all illegal alien families and the decision not to enforce our laws. This policy would be disastrous. …This administration did not create a policy of separating families at the border. …Children in D.H.S. and H.H.S. custody are being well taken care of. The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement provides meals, medical care and educational services to these children. They are provided temporary shelter, and H.H.S. works hard to find a parent, relative or foster home to care for these children. Parents can still communicate with their children through phone calls and video conferencing. …Parents who entered illegally are, by definition, criminals. Illegal entry is a crime as determined by Congress. By entering our country illegally, often in dangerous circumstances, illegal immigrants put their children at risk.Here is the bottom line: D.H.S. is no longer ignoring the law. We’re enforcing the laws as they exist on the books. As long as illegal entry remains a criminal offense, D.H.S. will not look the other way. D.H.S. will faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress, as we are sworn to do.EXCERPTS FROM FOLLOW-UP QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSIONREPORTER: Secretary Nielsen, what you talked about there, D.H.S. is no longer ignoring the law, you’re calling on Congress to change the law. I mean, that is the big message here. Members of Congress on the Democratic side say that you are using children as a lever to try to get them to take legislative action. What do you say to that?NIELSEN: I say that is a very cowardly response. It is clearly within their power to make the laws and change the laws. They should do so.REPORTER: You have seen the photos of children in cages? Have you heard the audio clip of these children wailing that just came out today? … is that the image of this country that you want out there, children in cages?NIELSEN: The image I want of this country is an immigration system that secures our border and upholds our humanitarian ideals. Congress needs to fix it.REPORTER: I want to give you a chance to respond to Laura Bush. In an op-ed, she says this is cruel, she supports an application of the law. Even the current first lady, Melania Trump, has said we should be a nation of laws, we should do so with heart. Do you have anything you want to tell them, do you believe they are misunderstanding the situation or do you believe there is any component of this policy, which as you’ve outlined other administrations have done but you are using it in a way that is more intense and creates the separation issue.NIELSEN: What my response would be is calling attention to this matter is important. This is a very serious issue that has resulted after years and years of Congress not taking action. So I would thank them both for their comments, I would thank them both for their concerns, I share their concerns, but Congress is the one that needs to fix this.REPORTER: The policy is not by your definition in any way cruel?NIELSEN: It is not a policy. Our policy at D.H.S. is to do what we’re sworn to do which is to enforce the law.REPORTER: Former first lady Laura Bush compared this to Japanese internment during World War II, one of the darkest days in the nation’s history. Do you believe that the effect of this policy, so not the law, but the effect of it on separating children from families in those specific instances is moral? Is it ethical? Is it American?NIELSEN: What I believe is that we should exercise our democratic rights as Americans and fix the problem. It is a problem and let’s fix it.REPORTER: How is this not child abuse?NIELSEN: Which -- Be more specific, please. Enforcing the law?REPORTER: These images … and the sounds [of children crying] that we’ve seen from the big box stores, the Walmarts and the other stores. When you see this, how is this not specifically child abuse for these innocent children who are indeed being separated from their parents?NIELSEN: So I want to be clear on a couple of other things. The vast majority, vast, vast majority of children who are in the care of H.H.S. right now -- 10,000 of the 12,000 -- were sent here alone by their parents. That is when they were separated. So somehow we’ve conflated everything. …REPORTER: If I could follow up, though. For the hundreds that are not included in there -- you said 10,000 -- but for the hundreds that we have seen, perhaps up to 2,000, are there any examples of child abuse that you believe and how could this not be child abuse for the people who are taken from their parents? Not the ones who are sent here with their parents blessing or with the smuggler, the people taken from their parents.NIELSEN: Unfortunately, I’m not in any position to deal with hearsay stories. If someone has a specific allegation, … I ask they provide that information to the Department of Homeland Security. We will look into it.REPORTER: Pictures have been released to the public, they’ve been aired all over national television. … the kids being held in the cages.REPORTER: Separating kids at this rate from their parents is something new and specific to this administration once the attorney general announced the zero-tolerance policy. So why doesn’t the president pick up the phone and change the policy? He said that he hates it.NIELSEN: I think what the president is trying to do is find a long-term fix. So why don’t we have Congress change the laws --REPORTER: President Trump had a lot to say the last few days about immigration, but he’s offered no compassion to the families that are being separated at the border. Do you know why that is and why won’t he simply pause your department’s enforcement of this administration policy until Congress reaches that long-term fix so that these families can be reunited.NIELSEN: He has been attempting to work with Congress since he’s been in office. He’s made it very clear that we will enforce the laws of the United States as long as this administration is here. As part of that, he has continually reached out to Congress to fix this. And I think what you’ve seen him do in the last few days is that. Is continue to tell Congress, please work with us, the system is broken. The only people that benefit from the system right now are the smugglers, the traffickers, those who are peddling drugs and terrorists. So let’s fix the system.REPORTER: That didn’t answer the question. Does he feel any compassion for the families being separated? He’s talked about the parents being possible criminals, he’s blamed it on Democrats, he’s offered no words of compassion.NIELSEN: I think he has said in tweets that he would like Congress to act to end the underlying laws that require the separation. … The laws prohibit us from detaining families while they go through prosecution for illegally entering the border and while they go through prosecutions for immigration proceedings. If we close the loopholes, we can keep the families together. Which is what they did in the last administration until a court ruled that we can no longer do that. After 20, days [under the terms of the Flores settlement] we have to release both unaccompanied children and accompanied children. Which means that we cannot detain families together. The only option is to not enforce the law at all.REPORTER: You said that you want Congress to close some loopholes. With that, you also said that you want to make this work. Now are these kids being used as pawns for a wall? Many people are asking that and Democrats are saying this is your discretion and there is no law that said that this White House could separate parents from their children. … can you definitively say, are the children being used as pawns against -- for a wall? Yes or no? Can you say yes or no to that?NIELSEN: The children are not being used as a pawn. We’re trying to protect the children, which is why I’m asking Congress to act.REPORTER: Are what we’re seeing -- the pictures, the audio, the stories -- are they an intended consequence of the administration’s decision making or unintended consequence?NIELSEN: I think that they reflect the focus of those who post such pictures and narratives. The narratives we don’t see are the narratives of the crime, of the opioids, of the smugglers, of who are people killed by gang members, of American children who are recruited and then when they lose the drugs they’re tased and beaten. So we don’t have a balanced view of what’s happening, but what’s happening at the border is the border is being overrun by those who have no right to cross it. As I said before, if you are seeking asylum, go to a port of entry. …We have limited resources, we have multiple missions at C.B.P. and what we do is based on the very high standards we have, if we do not have enough bed space, if we do not have enough medical personnel on staff, if we do not have enough caretakers on staff, then we will tell people that come to the border that they need to come back. We are not turning them away. We are saying we want to take care of you in the right way, right now we do not have the resources at this particular moment in time, come back.REPORTER: Are you intending for this to play out as it is playing out? Are you intending for parents to be separated from children? Are you intending to send a message?NIELSEN: I find that offensive. No. Because why would I ever create a policy that purposely does that.REPORTER: Perhaps as a deterrence?NIELSEN: No. The way that it works. … But the answer is, it is a law passed by the United States Congress. Rather than fixing the law, Congress is asking those of us who enforce the law to turn our backs on the law and not enforce the law. It is not an answer. The answer is to fix the laws.* * *“Myth vs. Fact: DHS Zero-Tolerance Policy” (press release, Department of Homeland Security):In recent days, we have seen reporters, Members of Congress, and other groups mislead the public on the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) zero-tolerance policy.Federal law enforcement officers have sworn duties to enforce the laws that Congress passes. Repeating intentionally untrue and unsubstantiated statements about DHS agents, officers, and procedures is irresponsible and deeply disrespectful to the men and women who risk their lives every day to secure our border and enforce our laws.MythDHS has a policy to separate families at the border.FactDHS does not have a blanket policy of separating families at the border. However, DHS does have a responsibility to protect all minors in our custody. This means DHS will separate adults and minors under certain circumstances. These circumstances include: 1) when DHS is unable to determine the familial relationship, 2) when DHS determines that a child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or 3) when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution.* Familial Relationship – If there is reason to question the claimed familial relationship between an adult and child, it is not appropriate to detain adults and children together.* Human Trafficking and Smuggling – If there is reason to suspect the purported parent or legal guardian of human trafficking or smuggling, DHS detains the adult in an appropriate, secure detection facility, separate from the minor. DHS continues to see instances and intelligence reports indicating minors are trafficked by unrelated adults, posing as a “family” in an effort to avoid detention.* Safety Risk – If there is reason to suspect the purported parent or legal guardian poses a safety risk to the child (e.g. suspected child abuse), it is not appropriate to maintain the adult and child together.* Criminal Prosecution – If an adult is referred for criminal prosecution, the adult will be transferred to U.S. Marshals Service custody and any children will be classified as an unaccompanied alien child and transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services custody.In recent months, DHS has seen a staggering increase in the number of illegal aliens using children to pose as family units to gain entry into the United States. From October 2017 to February 2018, there was a 315 percent increase in the number of cases of adults with minors fraudulently posing as “family units” to gain entry.MythPrior to April 2017, DHS never separated families arriving at the border.FactDHS has separated families under the circumstances described above. Because of court decisions, DHS can generally no longer hold families in detention beyond 20 days.MythDHS can indefinitely detain families who cross the border illegally.FactDHS generally releases families within 20 days. This creates a “get out of jail free” card for illegal alien families and encourages groups of illegal aliens to pose as families hoping to take advantage of that loophole.In 2014, DHS increased detention facilities for arriving alien families and held families pending the outcome of immigration proceedings. However, a federal judge ruled in 2016 that under the Flores Settlement Agreement, minors detained as part of a family unit cannot be detained in unlicensed facilities for longer than a presumptively reasonable period of 20 days, at which point, such minors must be released or transferred to a licensed facility. Because most jurisdictions do not offer licensure for family residential centers, DHS rarely holds family units for longer than 20 days. The judge’s ruling made it much more difficult for the Federal government to use the detention authorities Congress gave it.MythDHS is referring for prosecution all families coming to the border.FactDHS only refers to the Department of Justice those adults who violate the law by crossing the border illegally (or who have violated some other criminal law) and are amenable for prosecution. When adults, with or without children, unlawfully enter this country, there must be a consequence for breaking our laws.DHS is not referring for prosecutions families or individuals arriving at ports of entry or attempting to enter the country through legal means. These families and individuals have not broken the law and will be processed accordingly.MythDHS is turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry.FactDHS complies with Federal law with regard to processing individuals claiming asylum at ports of entry.CBP processes all aliens arriving at all ports of entry without documents as expeditiously as possible without negatively affecting the agency's primary mission to protect the American public from dangerous people and materials while enhancing the nation’s economic competitiveness through facilitating legitimate trade and travel.As the number of arriving aliens determined to be inadmissible at ports of entry continues to rise, CBP must prioritize its limited resources to ensure its primary mission is being executed. Depending on port circumstances at the time of arrival, CBP officials will allocate the necessary resources to its primary mission and operate appropriate access controls and queue management procedures for those arriving aliens without proper travel documents.MythDHS separates families who entered at the ports of entry and who are seeking asylum – even though they have not broken the law.FactIf an adult enters at a port of entry and claims asylum, they will not face prosecution for illegal entry. DHS does have a responsibility to protect minors we apprehend and will separate in three circumstances: (1) when DHS is unable to determine the familial relationship, (2) when DHS determines that a child may be at risk with the parent or legal guardian, or (3) when the parent or legal guardian is referred for criminal prosecution.MythOnce separated, arriving alien adults cannot contact minors and are not told where the minors are being held by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).FactDHS is committed to and has procedures in place to connect family members after separation so adults know the location of minors and have regular communication with them.MythLanguage barriers prevent aliens apprehended at the border, and subject to prosecution, from receiving adequate information.FactAll U.S. Border Patrol trainees are required to take Spanish language training while at the Border Patrol Academy, and achieve proficiency in Spanish. All Border Patrol personnel on the Southwest Border are bilingual.CBP apprehends illegal aliens from numerous countries that speak many languages other than Spanish. Should an agent ever have a language or communication issue, they are required to find another Agent who speaks the language or to utilize contract interpreters.All Border Patrol personnel at the border are directed to clearly explain the relevant process to apprehended individuals. CBP provides detainees with written documentation (in Spanish and English) that lays out the process – to include the appropriate phone numbers to contact.MythCBP and ICE officers are not properly trained to separate minors from their custodians.FactThe safety of CBP employees, detainees, and the public is paramount during all aspects of CBP operations. CBP treats all individuals in its custody with dignity and respect, and complies will all laws and policy, including CBP’s National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search (TEDS). TEDS reinforces/reiterates the need to consider the best interest of children and mandates adherence to established protocols to protect at-risk populations, to include standards for the transport and treatment of minors in CBP custody.All ICE facility staff who interact with adults receive trauma-informed care training. ICE is augmenting mental health care staffing, to include trained clinical staff, to provide mental health services to detained adults.MythDHS detention facilities are in poor condition and do not provide clean drinking water.FactDHS facilities are safe and sanitary, and adults and minors are provided access to food and drinking water, medical care as needed, and adequate temperature control and ventilation.MythDHS and HHS houses migrants in “inhumane fenced cages” or in an “ice box.”FactDHS and HHS utilize short-term facilities in order to process and temporarily hold migrants that have been apprehended. These short-term facilities do not employ the use of ‘cages’ to house minors. Certain facilities make use of barriers in order to separate minors of different genders and age groups – for the safety of those who are being held. Additionally, CBP facilities have adequate temperature control and ventilation. ICE facilities are designed for longer-term detention of adults and, in some cases, families.DHS takes seriously our responsibility for the safety and security of all migrants in the custody of the United States government.MythDHS has never separated families for prosecutions before – this is a new policy in this Administration.FactIllegal border crossers, including family units, were referred for prosecutions, as appropriates, under the previous Administration. The average referral rate for amenable adults from FY10 – FY16 was 21 percent.MythBy choice, DHS refuses to keep families together through the immigration adjudication and removal process.FactCourt decisions interpreting the Flores Settlement Agreement (FSA), which has been in existence for over 20 years but was significantly broadened in 2016, limits the government’s ability to detain family units. Pursuant to these court decisions, minors detained as part of a family unit cannot be detained in unlicensed facilities for longer than a presumptively reasonable period of 20 days, at which point, minors must be released or transferred to a licensed facility. Because most jurisdictions do not offer licensure for family residential centers, DHS can rarely detain a family for longer than 20 days.The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) requires unaccompanied alien children (other than those from contiguous countries – Mexico and Canada – who are eligible to withdraw their application for admission) be transferred from DHS to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours, absent exceptional circumstances.* * *Fox News host Tucker Carlson, known for his anti-immigration and anti-immigrant views, criticizes critics of the family separation policy.HuffPost:Fox News host Tucker Carlson has vilified critics of the Trump administration’s strict family separation policy, framing the opposition as a threat to “your country.”Carlson on Monday [June 18] claimed “elites” like Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who were among those speaking against President Donald Trump’s immigration policy earlier in the day, were cheering the ruin of American “strong families” to maintain their political power.“You think any of these people really care about family separation? ... No matter what they tell you, this is not about helping children,” Carlson said. “Their goal is to change your country forever -- and they are succeeding, by the way.” …“A lot of the people yelling at you on TV don’t even have children, so, don’t for a second let them take the moral high ground,” Carlson said. …The “ruling elite,” Carlson said, have nothing to lose from opposing the separation of families who cross the border illegally.“There is no cost to them,” he said. “The cost is entirely on you -- but don’t complain, or else they will call you Hitler.”The HuffPost story included a tweet from Carlson on the day after the program:You think any of these people care about family separation? If they did, they’d be upset about the collapse of the American family, which is measurable and real. They’re not. They welcome that collapse, because strong families are an impediment to their political power.-- Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 19, 2018* * *Close relatives of White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller denounce the family septation policy and find fault with Miller’s role in devising it, as is noted in an article in The Forward.*****************************************************June 19, 2018In an address at the National Federation of Independent Businesses 75th Anniversary Celebration, President Trump defends the administration’s family separation policy:I want to take a moment to address something you’ve been reading a lot about: the illegal immigration crisis on our southern border. It’s been going on for many, many decades and many years. … all we need is good legislation, and we can have it taken care of. And we have to get the Democrats to go ahead and work with us. Because as a result of Democrat-supported loopholes in our federal laws, most illegal immigrant families and minors from Central America who arrive unlawfully at the border cannot be detained together or removed together, only released.… what I’m asking Congress to do is to give us a third option, which we have been requesting since last year -- the legal authority to detain and promptly remove families together as a unit. We have to be able to do this. This is the only solution to the border crisis. We have to stop child smuggling. This is the way to do it."We want to solve family separation. I don't want the children to be taken away from parents. And when you are prosecuting the parents for coming in illegally, which should happen, you have to take the children away.”But you have to stand for something, and you have to stand for safety and security of our country. We can’t let people pour in. They’ve got to go through the process. And maybe it’s politically correct, or maybe it’s not. We got to stop separation of the families. But politically correct or not, we have a country that needs security, that needs safety, that has to be protected.* * *Administration officials amend their figures on family separation, as reported by Vox:Trump administration officials said Tuesday [June 19] that 2,342 children have been separated from 2,206 parents at the U.S.-Mexico border between May 5 and June 9 as part of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting people who cross the border illegally.An average of 60 children a day are being separated from their parents at the U.S./Mexico border, as President Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy. …Last week, the government declared that 1,995 children had been separated from their parents from April 19 to May 31 -- an average of 46 a day. But that included a few weeks before the “zero tolerance” policy was in full effect. The new numbers … show that under “zero tolerance,” an average of 65 children have been separated from parents each day.* * *Kim Reynolds, the Republican governor of Iowa, calls the separation of immigrant families "horrific" and says the government shouldn't treat children as “pawns.”* * *Joe Straus, the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives, calls for an end to the family separation policy:"In order to at least begin addressing this issue, there is no need to wait for Congress to act. That’s why I respectfully ask that you move immediately to rescind the policy that [Attorney] General [Jeff] Sessions announced in April,” Straus said in a letter to President Trump."Please listen to the growing number of Americans, faith leaders and elected officials from both parties who are voicing our concerns about this growing crisis. This is not a binary choice between rampant crime and tearing families apart. In light of the potential harm being inflicted on these children and the ambiguity about their status after they're removed from these facilities, I ask that you please immediately rescind directives that have resulted in the increase in separations of children from their migrant parents."*****************************************************June 20, 2018/Facing a national outcry, President Trump signs an executive order designed to keep migrant families together at the U.S.-Mexico border, abandoning his earlier claim that the crisis was caused by an iron-clad law and not a policy that he could reverse. The order, drafted by Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, directs the department to keep families together after they are detained crossing the border illegally.Only five days earlier, on June 15, Trump had asserted that “You can't [reverse the policy] through an executive order”:Q Mr. President, do you agree with children being taken away from (inaudible)?THE PRESIDENT: No, I hate it. I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law. They will force --Q Sir, that’s your own policy. That’s your own policy. Why do you keep lying about it, sir?THE PRESIDENT: Quiet. Quiet. That’s the Democrats’ law. We can change it tonight. We can change it right now. I will leave here --Q You’re the President. You can change it right now.THE PRESIDENT: I will leave here -- no, no. You need their votes. You need their votes. The Democrats, all they have to do --Q Mr. President, you control both chambers of Congress. The Republicans do.THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me. By one vote? We don’t need it. You need 60 votes.Q (Inaudible.)THE PRESIDENT: Excuse me. We have the one vote -- excuse me. We need a one-vote -- we have a one-vote edge. We need 60. So we need 10 votes. We can’t get them from the Democrats.Q What about executive action?THE PRESIDENT: Now, wait. Wait. You can’t do it through an executive order.* * *The Guardian:“I consider it to be a very important executive order,” Trump said during the signing ceremony in the Oval Office, flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen. “It’s about keeping families together while at the same time being sure that we have a very powerful, very strong border, and border security will be equal if not greater than previously.”He added: “I didn’t like the sight or the feeling of families being separated.”However, the text of the executive order makes clear that a hardline approach to immigration enforcement will continue.The order instructs government officials to continue its “zero-tolerance” enforcement policy of criminal prosecution for every immigrant who crosses the border illegally, but says that officials will seek to “maintain family unity” by detaining parents and children together instead of separating them while their legal cases wind through a severely backlogged immigration court system.* * *The New York Times noted that “the president’s order does nothing to address the plight of the more than 2,300 children who have already been separated from their parents under the president’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy. Federal officials initially said those children would not be immediately reunited with their families while the adults remain in federal custody during their immigration proceedings.”The New York Times:“There will not be a grandfathering of existing cases,” said Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Wolfe said the decision about the children was made by the White House.But later Wednesday evening, Brian Marriott, the senior director of communications for the agency, said that Mr. Wolfe had “misspoke” and insisted that “it is still very early, and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter.” Mr. Marriott said that “reunification is always the goal” and that the agency “is working toward that” for the children separated from their families because of Mr. Trump’s policy.His statement left open the possibility, though, that the children could be connected with other family members or “appropriate” sponsors living in the United States, not necessarily the parent they were separated from at the border. …In addition to the public condemnations of his policy -- including by Pope Francis on Wednesday -- Mr. Trump had been lectured by the first lady, Melania Trump, and Ivanka Trump, his eldest daughter, according to White House officials.Melania Trump had been pushing her husband about the family separation policy from the beginning, an official said, arguing that there was a middle way between opening America’s borders and tearing children away from their parents. Separating children from their mother and father, she told him, is wrong.Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, were also pressing the president to find a way to end the political crisis caused by the family separations at the border, according to people familiar with their conversations.*****************************************************June 21, 2018House Democrats hold a “shadow hearing” on Capitol Hill to discuss the impact and human cost of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. The hearing was hosted by Representatives Roybal-Allard and Pramilla Jayapal, co-chairs of the Women’s Working Group on Immigration Reform, a consortium of members of Congress and advocacy groups dedicated to advancing immigration reform.“The Trump policy of tearing children away from their mothers is unforgivable,” Representative Roybal-Allard said. “According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, the trauma children face when separated from their parents is unimaginable and often irreversible. When children experience toxic stress, it can permanently change the architecture of their brains, affect their health, and their ability to succeed academically. It is impossible to understand how President Trump can ignore the pain he is causing these children. First, he separates them from their parents and now he proposes to keep them together but in detention with no certain end in sight. In addition, the president’s new executive order does nothing to reunite the children already separated from their parents. Nor is there any effort on the president’s agenda to help address the damage that is already done to these children who have been separated.”*****************************************************June 21-22, 2018The New York Times reports on meeting of government officials held at the White House involving disagreements over how to carry out President Trump’s executive order on keeping together immigrant families at the Mexican border.The Times reported that Kevin K. McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, had asked how his agency was supposed to detain parents and children together when the law requires that children not be held indefinitely in jail (under the terms of the Flores Settlement).According to the Times, “Officials at the southwestern border are struggling to obey Mr. Trump’s demand to prosecute people who illegally enter the United States -- ending what the president has reviled as a ‘catch and release’ -- while also following an executive order he issued Wednesday to keep migrant families together as they are processed in courts.” The result, it was explained, as with the case of the President’s travel ban imposed upon countries with large Muslim populations, was “a vastly complicated bureaucratic system is colliding head-on with Mr. Trump’s shoot-from-the-hip use of executive power.”:… Customs and Border Protection officials forcefully argued that agents who are apprehending migrant families at the border cannot refer all of the adults for prosecution because the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies do not have the resources to process each case.In particular, the border officials expressed concern about the number of prosecutors and judges needed to handle the proceedings, and the lack of space available to detain families while the cases go forward.As a result, the officials from Customs and Border Protection told White House and Justice Department officials that they have had to issue fewer prosecution referrals of adults with children despite the president’s “zero tolerance” policy on illegal immigration.Justice Department officials shot back, maintaining that the department has made no changes to its hard-line stance on illegal border crossings as it continues to receive referrals for prosecutions from Customs and Border Protection agents.The Times reported, based upon statements made by unnamed Customs and Border Protection officials, that 500 children had been separated from their parents since May 2018 “have been reunited or will be reunited with their families by Sunday [June 24].” These children were in the agency’s custody. “It is unclear when the other 2,300 children [separated from their parents since April 2018] will be reunited with their families. ... The children have been placed in facilities run by the Health and Human Services Department, some of them thousands of miles from where their parents are being detained.”Administration officials told the Times that they had finalized a process to let parents know where their children are and to have regular communication with them after separation. “Parents who are deported will be reunited with their children before being removed from the country, officials said.”*****************************************************June 22, 2018“Days after yielding to pressure to reverse his policy of separating migrant families at the southern border, President Trump returned Friday [June 22] to the nativist rhetoric that animated his outsider presidential campaign, casting immigrants as threats to ‘our citizens’ ,” The Washington Post reports.Trump invited families of Americans killed by undocumented immigrants to tell their stories of being “permanently separated” from loved ones.“These are the stories that Democrats and people that are weak on immigration, they don’t want to discuss, they don’t want to hear, they don’t want to see, they don’t want to talk about,” he said.* * *“We must maintain a Strong Southern Border,” Trump tweeted on Friday morning, June 22. “We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections.”* * *Protesters gathered outside the Alexandria, Virginia home of Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security, demanding her resignation over the family separation policy. They distributed leaflets calling her a “child snatcher.”*****************************************************June 23, 2018Officials release a plan to reunify migrant children with their parents in a mass detention center (Case Padre) near Brownsville, Texas. Details of the plan were unclear.The Arizona Republic reported:[It remains] unclear how long it would take to bring parents back together with their children. And the statement from to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicated the reunification process may not happen until after a parent's deportation proceedings are complete.Under the policy, a parent in deportation proceedings must also request that their child be removed with them. It is unclear how often parents have chosen to be deported without their child, possibly in an attempt to save a child from violence in their home country.It is also unclear how many parents, amid the Trump administration's forced family separations, were deported without first being informed of where their children were or how to get them back.* * *In a New York Times article , Caitlin Dickerson reports that some officials who had been charged with implementing the family separation policy felt “helpless” and distressed about it and “went home wracked with guilt.” “They were overwhelmed with hundreds of pleas a week,’ Dickerson wrote, “written on behalf of migrant parents and children searching desperately for one another.”Dickerson noted that there was “considerable confusion” within ICE over how to proceed now that the family separation practice had been suspended: “After Mr. Trump called on Wednesday for an abrupt end to the separations, significant questions remained over what to do with adults in custody who claimed that their children had been taken. Should they be released and allowed to pick up the children, many of whom have been sent to shelters in far-flung states? Should they be held in custody and only reunited before deportation, which could take months?”At the Health and Human Services Department, she said the suspension of the family separation policy had “prompted a scramble to begin reuniting parents and children.” The number of cases of separated children was said to be higher than the official counts provided by the government.* * *Late Saturday evening (June 23), the Department of Homeland Security announces that 522 migrant children were reunited with adults from whom they had been separated and that it has 2,053 “separated minors” in its custody and was taken steps to return them to parents. The DHS statement said that mothers and fathers who had been separated from their children and were facing deportation would be allowed to request that their children be sent home with them.*****************************************************June 24, 2018U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, Facebook post:Sunday morning [June 24], I flew to McAllen, Texas to find out what's really happening to immigrant families ripped apart by the Trump administration.There's one thing that's very clear: The crisis at our border isn't over.I went straight from the airport to the McAllen Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processing center that is the epicenter of Donald Trump's so-called "zero-tolerance" policy. This is where border patrol brings undocumented migrants for intake before they are either released, deported, turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ….From the outside, the CBP processing center looks like any other warehouse on a commercial street lined with warehouses. There's no clue about the horrors inside.Before we could get in, CBP insisted we had to watch a government propaganda video. There's no other way to describe it – it's like a movie trailer. It was full of dramatic narration about the "illegals" crossing our border, complete with gory pictures about the threats that these immigrants bring to the United States, from gangs to skin rashes …Then an employee described what we were about to see. "They have separate pods. I'll call them pods. I don't really know how they name them." Clearly they had gotten the memo not to call them what they are: cages. Every question I asked them had a complicated answer that led to two more questions – even the simple question about how long people were held there. "Nobody is here longer than 24 hours." "Well, maybe 24-48 hours." "72 hours max." And "no children are separated out." "Well, except older children."The warehouse is enormous, with a solid concrete floor and a high roof. It is filled with cages. Cages for men. Cages for women. Cages for mamas with babies. Cages for girls. Cages for boys.… we came into the area where the children were held. These cages were bigger with far more people. In the center of the cage, there's a freestanding guard tower probably a story or story-and-a-half taller to look down over the children. The girls are held separately in their own large cage. The children told us that they had come to the United States with family and didn't know where they had been taken. Eleven years old. Twelve. Locked in a cage with strangers. Many hadn't talked to their mothers or fathers. They didn't know where they were or what would happen to them next.The children were quiet. Early afternoon, and they just sat. Some were on thin mats with foil blankets pulled over their heads. They had nothing – no books, no toys, no games. They looked shell shocked.And then there were the large cages with women and small children. Women breast-feeding their young children. …One thing you won't see much of in the CBP processing center? Fathers caged with their children. After pressing the CBP agents, they explained that men traveling with children are automatically released from the facility. They just don't have the cages there to hold them. Women with small children, on the other hand, could be detained indefinitely. I pressed them on this again and again. The only answer: they claimed to be protecting "the safety of the mother and children." …The Trump administration may be "reunifying" families, but their definition of a family is only a parent and a child. If, for example, a 9-year-old crosses with an 18-year-old sister – or an aunt or uncle, or a grandparent, or anyone who isn't the child's documented legal guardian – they are not counted as a family and they will be separated.Mothers and children may be considered "together" if they're held in the same gigantic facility, even if they're locked in separate cages with no access to one another. (In the world of CBP and ICE, that's how the 10-year-old girls locked in a giant cage are "not separated" from their mothers who are in cages elsewhere in the facility.)In the process of "reunifying" families, the government may possibly count a family as reunited by sending the child to a distant relative they've never met – not their parents. …The system for tracking separated families is virtually unknown, if one exists at all. …… my last stop of the day was at the Port Isabel Detention Center, about an hour east of McAllen. It's one of the largest detention facilities in Texas.The Department of Homeland Security had released some details on its plan to reunify families. The release noted that Port Isabel will be the "primary family reunification and removal center for adults in their custody."Let's be clear: Port Isabel isn't a reunification center. It's a detention center. A prison.There's no ambiguity on this point. I met with the head of the facility. He said several times that they had no space for children, no way to care for them, and no plans to bring any children to his locked-down complex. When I pressed on what was the plan for reunification of children with their parents, he speculated that HHS (the Department of Health and Human Services) would take the children somewhere, but it certainly wasn't going to be to his facility. When I asked how long HHS would take, he speculated that it would be weeks, but he said that was up to them. He had his job to do: He would hold these mothers and fathers until he received orders to send them somewhere else. Period.So let me say it again. This is a prison – not a reunification center. …An ICE official brought in a group of nine detained mothers who had volunteered to speak to us. I don't believe that ICE cherry-picked these women for the meeting, because everything they told me was horrifying.Each mother told us her own story about crossing the border, being taken to a processing center, and the point that they were separated from their child or children. In every case, the government had lied to them about where their children were being taken. In every case, save one, no mother had spoken to her child in the days since the separation. And in every case, no mother knew where her child was.At the time of separation, most of the mothers were told their children would be back. One woman had been held at "the icebox," a center that has earned its nickname for being extremely cold. When the agent came to take her child, she was told that it was just too cold for the child in the center, and that they were just going to keep the child warm until she was transferred. That was mid-June. She hasn't seen her child since.One mother had been detained with her child. They were sleeping together on the floor of one of the cages, when, at 3:00 am, the guards took her away. She last saw her 7-year-old son sleeping on the floor. She cried over and over, "I never got to say goodbye. I never got to say goodbye." That was early-June, and she hasn't seen him since. …The women I met were traumatized, weeping, and begging for help. They don't understand what is happening to them – and they're begging to be reunited with their kids. …Three young lawyers were at Port Isabel at the same time we were. The lawyers told us that their clients – the people they've spoken to in the detention center – have strong and credible cases for asylum. But the entire process for being granted asylum depends on one phone call with an immigration official where they make the case for why they should be allowed to stay. One of the first questions a mother will be asked is, "Have you been separated from a child?" For some of the women, just asking that question makes them fall apart and weep.The lawyers are worried that these women are in such a fragile and fractured state, they're in no shape to make the kind of detailed, credible case needed for themselves or their children. They had no chance in our system because they've lost their children and desperately want them back. … The mothers say that they can hear babies cry at night.This isn't about politics. This isn't about Democrats or Republicans. This is about human beings. Children held in cages today. Babies scattered all over this country. And mamas who, in the dark of night, hear them cry.*****************************************************June 26, 2018Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego issues a nationwide injunction temporarily stopping the Trump administration’s practice of separating children from their parents at the border and ordering that families already separated be reunited within 30 days. The judge ruled that children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, and he ordered that all children must be allowed to talk to their parents within 10 daysIn his ruling, the judge wrote that a "chaotic circumstance of the Government's own making … has reached a crisis level," resulting in "the casual, if not deliberate, separation of families" and that the Trump administration had "no reunification plan in place."“A practice of this sort implemented in this way,” he wrote, quoting case law, “is likely to be 'so egregious, so outrageous, that it may fairly be said to shock the contemporary conscience,' … interferes with rights ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ … and is so ‘brutal’ and ‘offensive’ that it [does] not comport with traditional ideas of fair play and decency.”* * *Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee, says that the department would only reunite children with their detained parents if Congress passed legislation revoking the requirements mandated by the Flores Settlement. “I cannot reunite them … while the parents are in custody because of the court order that doesn’t allow the kids to be with their parents for more than 20 days. We need Congress to fix that,” Flores said.*****************************************************June 27, 2018By a vote of 301 to 121, the House of Representatives rejects a wide-ranging GOP immigration bill. Among its major provisions (including funding President Trump’s border wall and offering young undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship), the bill would have lifted the cap (stipulated by the Flores Settlement) prohibiting the government from detaining accompanied children for more than 20 days, “a provision Democrats claim [as was noted by ABC News] would allow the government to detain children with their parents indefinitely.”* * *The Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Health and Human Services inspector general both commence reviews of the Trump administration's handling of thousands of migrant children separated from their families at the border. The GAO said that it would audit the systems and processes used to track families as they were separated, including how the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement monitored each minor in its care.The HHS inspector general announced that the department would review the safety and health protections in the agency's shelters for migrant children.* * *Trump administration say officials say that it will be difficult to comply the timetable for reuniting parents and children mandated in the June 26 ruling by Judge Dana M. Sabraw.The New York Times reported that the ruling came as a surprise to the administration./Reasons given by the officials for the delay in implementing the mandated reunifications included: they were not planning to release children while their parents were being detained to face prosecution on charges of trying to enter the United States illegally; that they had to confirm that adults claiming children are actually their parents, and that the adults pose no danger to the children -- in other words, that before releasing the children to parents or other relatives, they must “vet” the parents, a task that could take weeks, the officials said; that some potential sponsors were falsely claiming to be a parent and that, in order to confirm a parent-child relationship, the federal government might request a birth certificate or use DNA testing or “other biometrics” and would try to do a criminal-background check, using F.B.I. fingerprint records, and might search sex offender registries.* * *The Texas Tribune reports that, according to attorneys in Texas, California and Washington, D.C., immigrant children as young as 3 are being ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings.“We were representing a 3-year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child -- in the middle of the hearing -- started climbing up on the table,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. “It really highlighted the absurdity of what we’re doing with these kids.”*****************************************************June 29, 2018“The Trump administration plans to detain migrant families together in custody rather than release them, according to a new court filing that suggests such detentions could last longer than the 20 days envisioned by a court settlement [the Flores Settlement],” The Washington Post reports:“The government will not separate families but detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in a legal notice to a federal judge in California who has been overseeing long-running litigation about the detention of undocumented immigrants.The new filing does not explicitly say the Trump administration plans to hold families in custody beyond the 20-day limit, but by saying officials plan to detain them “during the pendency” of immigration proceedings, which in many cases can last months, it implies that families will spend that time in detention. …The Justice Department argued that while the previous [Flores] settlement had compelled it to release minors “without unnecessary delay,” the new court order, “which requires that the minor be kept with the parent, makes delay necessary in these circumstances.”*****************************************************June 30, 2018Protesters across the United States march to protest the Trump’ administration’s immigration and family separation policies.The protesters chanted “families belong together” in Lafayette Square opposite the White House. Protesters in New York City overflowed Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and were massed on the Brooklyn Bridge. Protests occurred in other cities around the country, including large, border cities such as El Paso, Texas, where immigrant children were being detained.“We don’t want a situation where we’re replacing baby jails with family camps,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for MoveOn, a progressive advocacy organization that helped organize the protest.“The idea of kids in cages and asylum seekers in prisons and moms being separated from breast-feeding children, this is just beyond politics, it really is just about right and wrong,” U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal was quoted as saying.*****************************************************July 1-5, 2018Referencing a recent Department of Homeland Security news release in which it was claimed that s it’s a “myth” that the agency “separates families, news stories are published that provide examples to the contrary.The Los Angeles Times:A woman named Mirian and her 18-month-old son reached Brownsville, Texas, early this year after fleeing Honduras, where the military had teargassed their home. She made her way to a port of entry and asked for asylum, according to court records.Mirian had her identification, her son’s birth certificate, which listed her as his mother, his hospital birth record and his vaccination records.Border officers took the records, then told her they would be taking her boy, she said in a sworn court declaration. They walked her out to a government car, told her to put him in a car seat and closed the door.It was three months before they were reunited. …Administration officials have said repeatedly that asylum seekers who don’t want to be separated from their children should present themselves at a port of entry. Doing so is the legal way to ask for asylum, they said.But court filings describe numerous cases in recent months in which families were separated after presenting themselves at a port of entry to ask for asylum.This happened even when asylum seekers carried records, such as birth certificates or hospital documents, listing them as the parents of their children, according to interviews and court records.While border officials have long had a policy of separating children when their safety might be in question, lawyers and advocates say they began seeing a significant increase last year in officials separating children from their parents who asked for asylum at ports of entry, without clear reasons.* * *The Texas Tribune and Reveal:In the weeks since President Donald Trump’s now-rescinded family separation policy created chaos and confusion across the country, the messages from his administration and prominent Republican members of Congress have been clear: Seek asylum legally at official ports of entry and you won’t lose your kids. There may be armed Customs and Border Protection agents standing at the halfway points of bridges -- but simply wait a few days, declare to them that you are seeking asylum, and you’ll get a fair shake.A recent Department of Homeland Security news release says it’s a “myth” that the agency “separates families who entered at the ports of entry and who are seeking asylum – even though they have not broken the law.” The release also says the agency “is [not] turning away asylum seekers at ports of entry.”But there’s ample evidence to suggest otherwise. Court records and individual cases discovered by The Texas Tribune indicate that a number of asylum seekers who came to international bridges in Texas and California were separated from their children anyway.*****************************************************July 3-4, 2018News reports indicate that parents separated from their children after being arrested for illegally entering the U.S. are being asked to choose between being deported alone or with their children. “After a court order to reunite more than 2,000 migrant children who were separated from their parents in May and June, the Trump administration has instructed immigration agents to give those parents two options: leave the country with your kids -- or leave the country without them, according to a copy of a government form obtained by NBC News.”An injunction issued on June 26 by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw (see above) had ordered the government to stop separating families at the border and to stop deporting parents without their children unless parents agreed to be sent back alone. Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit ruled on by Judge Sabraw, said the ACLU was concerned that immigrants with pending asylum claims were being misled them about their options. There was confusion over a new form developed by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that agents were directed to read. The form required detained parents to sign next to one of two lines: "I am requesting to reunite with my child(ren) for the purpose of repatriation to my country of citizenship," or "I am affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily requesting to return to my country of citizenship without my minor child(ren) who I understand will remain in the United States to pursue available claims of relief." The agents were instructed to read the form in a language the immigrant understood, which usually meant Spanish, but other indigenous languages were spoken by many migrants.*****************************************************July 5, 2018The Department of Health and Human Services is said to be in a “chaotic scramble” (The New York Times) to reunify nearly 3,000 children (including approximately 100 children under the age of 5) with their parents, in compliance with Judge Sabraw’s ruling. The department “said it was encountering significant logistical hurdles” (The Washington Post).Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar told reporters that the administration was working to overcome obstacles to follow the order but blamed the courts, Congress and immigrant parents for the crisis. He said the agency had reviewed the files of more than 11,800 children currently in its custody to determine how many had been separated from an accompanying adult during the six-week period in which the Trump administration was prosecuting all adults for illegal entry.“We will comply with the artificial deadlines created by the court -- deadlines that were not informed by the process needed to vet parents, including confirming parentage as well as determining the suitability of placement with that parent,” Azar said. “We will comply, even if those deadlines prevent us from conducting a standard or even a truncated vetting process.”HHS concluded there were “under 3,000” separated children, of whom around 100 were under the age of 5, Azar said. An earlier count provided by the administration had estimated about 2,000 to 2,300 children had been separated.Azar told reporters that the department was relocating the parents of the separated children to detention facilities “extremely close” to where the children were. He said that the agency was conducting DNA tests to verify familial relationships. The explained that the agency’s computer systems wasn’t designed to distinguish between children who arrived alone and those separated from adults by the federal government, which, Mr. Azar said, made it difficult for officials to provide an exact count of how many minors in its care were subject to the court order for reunification.New York Times reporter Caitlin Dickerson put it bluntly: “Records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.” “The effort is complicated by the fact that two federal agencies [the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services] are involved in detaining and sheltering migrants, and they did not initially share records with each other,” she added.* * *U.S. Representatives Mark Meadows, chairman of the Government Operations Subcommittee on the House Oversight and Government Reform committee and Elijah Cummings, ranking Democrat on Oversight and Government Reform committee -- in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar -- request information about the thousands of children separated from parents since the “zero tolerance” policy to prosecute illegal border crossings was implemented. “Like many Americans, we want to ensure that we can reunite children who have been separated from their families as expeditiously as possible,” they wrote. The letter made specific requests for information about every child -- including their age, gender, and current location.“Lawmakers have complained about the lack of access to information and the facilities where parents are detained and children are sheltered,” The Washington Post noted.*****************************************************July 6, 2018Facing a deadline of July 31 to reunite migrant families, set by Judge Dana M. Sabraw of Federal District Court in San Diego, the Trump administration on Friday asks the federal judge for more time to reunite the families.In a conference call with reporters, Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said that nearly 3,000 children were in federal custody as a result of family separations intended to deter illegal immigration and that about 100 of them were under the age of 5. ‘[R]ecords connecting children to their parents have in some cases disappeared, according to some of those working on the reunifications, leaving the authorities struggling to confirm connections between family members.” The New York Times reported.In a status hearing with Judge Sabraw, the government lawyers said Health and Human Services would only be able to reunify about half of approximately 100 children under the age of 5 by the court-ordered deadline of July 10. The parents of 19 children, they said, had been released from custody into the U.S. and their whereabouts were unknown. The parents of another 19 children had been deported.“[T]the process has been complicated because the judge’s ruling applied not only to children taken from their parents under the ‘zero-tolerance’ border policy, but those separated for other reasons, several officials said,” as noted by New York Times reporter Miriam Jordan.Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit challenging the separation of families, said the process was proceeding more slowly than necessary because the government is insisting on using the same vetting procedures that it uses for so-called unaccompanied minors -- children, typically adolescents, who enter the United States alone and are released to an adult who claims to be a parent. “In those cases,” the Times’s Miriam Jordan explained, “protections are needed to make sure children are not handed over to adults seeking to exploit them.”“But such exhaustive protections, including home visits and the fingerprinting of every member of a household where a child will be residing, are slowing down reunifications,” she noted (quoting Gelernt).“It doesn’t make sense,” Gelernt said. “You have taken the child from the parent.”As noted in the Times article, President Trump’s executive order ending family separations “did not lay out steps for reuniting families.” Problems in reuniting families were occurring because parents and children were so widely separated. “Many children were sent to facilities thousands of miles away from their parents, and some are too young or scared to provide accurate information about their parents or their journey.”*****************************************************July 6-9, 2018The Justice Department reports that 54 children under age 5 are scheduled to be returned to their parents on July 10. The government had compiled a list of 102 children under that age who had forcibly been separated from their parents in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. On June 26, 2018, Judge Dana M. Sabraw had mandated -- in response to the ACLU’s suit -- a speedy reunification of migrant families.The department acknowledged that the government wouldn't meet the deadline for all the children, citing a variety of reasons: parents of some of the children had already been deported; the administration either had not finished matching separated children with their parents or had not cleared the parents to take custody.“These kids have already suffered so much because of this policy, and every extra day apart just adds to that pain,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said. He said that the government had not agreed to alter its ‘cumbersome, lengthy” reunification process, which immigration authorities say is necessary to ensure that children go to the right families. He said it was also unclear how much effort the government had made to locate parents already released from immigration custody or deported back to their home countries whose children were still in custody.“The reunited families will then be released and allowed to stay in the United States pending further immigration proceedings -- the exact opposite of what President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions had hoped to accomplish when they launched the ‘zero tolerance’ effort in May.” The Washington Post reported.*****************************************************July 9, 2018Judge Dolly M. Gee of the Federal District Court in Los Angeles rules there is no basis to amend the 1997 Flores Settlement, under which detained migrant children are required to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days. The Justice Department had argued that long-term confinement was the only way to avoid separating families when migrant parents were detained on criminal charges (such as illegal entry).The judge called the administration’s request to modify the Flores Settlement “a cynical attempt” to shift immigration policymaking to the courts in the wake of congressional inaction.The Trump administration and prominent Republicans in Congress had been citing the Flores Settlement to provide justification for separating migrant children from parents who illegally enter the United States. But the settlement did not require the government to break up families. Under Flores, there were three options in effect at the time (the Justice Department had filed its “application for relief” from the settlement on June 21, 2018): releasing families together; passing a law that would allow for family detention (which the Justice Department had argued for); or breaking up the families. Under its zero tolerance family separation policy, the Trump administration had in effect chosen the third option.*****************************************************July 10, 2018Judge Dana M. Sabraw orders the Trump administration to quicken its efforts to reunite migrant toddlers and infants with their parents and to rely on a more streamlined method to reunite separated families than the labor-intensive and time-consuming process it had been following. The administration had said the week before that more than 1,800 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border had been reunited with parents and sponsors but that hundreds remained apart.The judge said the government should have been able to reconnect 63 eligible young migrant children with their families by day’s end. He told the American Civil Liberties Union to keep tabs on the government’s efforts. “These are firm deadlines; they are not aspirational goals,” the judge said during a hearing in in San Diego.*****************************************************July 11, 2018The Wall Street Journal reports that “the Trump administration plans to ask a Judge Dana M. Sabraw to consider giving asylum-seeking parents arrested at the border a difficult choice: Agree to remain in custody with their children throughout their immigration proceedings or release the children to authorities to be placed with a sponsor.”“Federal officials have struggled to navigate between a pair of court orders,” the Journal noted, “one of which [per Judge Sabraw’s ruling] requires families to be reconnected by the end of the month and another [the Flores Settlement] that says children can’t be detained with their parents for more than 20 days.”“A Justice Department attorney, Scott Stewart, said the dueling orders, combined with the government’s desire to prosecute all adults who illegally cross the border, means parents will have to decide whether to stay together in detention or voluntarily separate. Department of Homeland Security officials said they would release some parents in the meantime, using monitoring tools including ankle bracelets to ensure they maintain contact ahead of court appearances.”The Journal noted that “if the judge were to approve the motion, it would likely set the stage for more large-scale detentions.”*****************************************************July 12, 2018The Department of Homeland Security announces that the administration has reunited all eligible migrant children younger than five years old with their families, two days after the deadline imposed by Judge Sabraw to rejoin infants and toddlers with parents, detained for illegally crossing the border, from whom the children were separated. Of the 103 infants and toddlers in government care, the administration said it had identified just 57 who were eligible for reunions. Forty-six other children weren’t immediately reunified because they were deemed ineligible by officials.Twelve parents who had been deported remain separated from their young children, the department announced.The government had until July 26, 2018 to reunite the remaining children, aged 5-17, under the terms of Judge Sabraw’s ruling.“Our message has been clear all along: Do not risk your own life or the life of your child by attempting to enter the United States illegally,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a joint statement. “Apply lawfully and wait your turn.”The Washington Post noted that some parents had been separated from their children even before Attorney General Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy in May.* * *Asked if deported parents would see their children again, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Health and Human Services told reporters they are under “no obligation to bring people who have no lawful status in this country back into this country for reunification,” NBC News’s Julia Ainsley reports.*****************************************************July 16, 2018Four members of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (Richard Danzig, Secretary of the Navy in the Clinton administration; Elizabeth Holtzman, a former congresswoman; David Martin, Department of Homeland Security deputy general counsel in the Obama administration; and Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center in the Obama) resign in protest over the Trump administration's immigration policies, citing the "morally repugnant" practice of separating immigrant families at the border."Were we consulted, we would have observed that routinely taking children from migrant parents was morally repugnant, counter-productive and ill-considered," the group wrote. "We cannot tolerate association with the immigration policies of this administration, nor the illusion that we are consulted on these matters," the group wrote in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.In a separate letter to Nielsen, Holtzman wrote: “Seizing children from their parents in violation of the constitutional rights of both is bad enough (mentally harmful to the children and infinitely painful to both the parents and children), but doing so without creating proper records to enable family reunification shows utter depravity on the part of the government officials involved."In an interview with The Washington Post, Holtzman said that while she did not believe the resignations would have an impact on Trump's decision-making on immigration, "I do think it's important for the American people to see that not everybody connected with the government is a brute, is a lawbreaker, and that actually some of us do have a measure of conscience."*****************************************************July 23, 2018The Trump administration -- facing a court-imposed deadline of July 26 to quickly reunite as many separated families as possible, says in a court filing that 463 parents of migrant children are no longer present in the United States, indicating that the number of mothers and fathers potentially deported without their children during the zero tolerance border crackdown could be far larger than previously acknowledged.Immigrant advocates said that migrant parents were pressured into signing voluntary deportation forms out of desperation to be released from immigration detention once their sons and daughters were taken from them and sent to government shelters, The Washington Post reported.*****************************************************July 25, 2018POLITICO reports that “Homeland Security officials may have neglected to give a choice to as many as three-quarters of all migrant parents removed from the United States about leaving their children behind, contradicting repeated public assurances from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.” It noted that the administration had failed to document consent in most such cases. “That lapse increased the number of departed parents whom officials must now find and contact about whether they wish to be reunited with their children, and, if so, figure out the logistics of how to bring them together. The revelation threatens to delay reunifications and renews questions about the administration’s original intent one day ahead of a court-ordered deadline to return most migrant children to their parents.”"All of these adults who left without their kids left based on a decision to leave their children," Nielsen had said July 19 at the Aspen Security Forum. "The parents always have the choice to take the children with them," Nielsen said on Fox News on July 24. "These are parents who have made the decision not to bring the children with them" (as reported in POLITICO).*****************************************************July 26, 2018The government reports that it would meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite the last “eligible” migrant families separated at the Southwest border. The New York Times attempts to clarify and elucidate this by noting that hundreds of children still remain in federal custody.“[I]n a day that saw government officials and community volunteers scrambling to bring families together, multiple reports of failed reunifications raised questions about whether the deadline had in fact been met. Further confusing the issue was a change in the way the government tallied its progress, with the latest report counting children rather than parents, a reversal from prior reports,’ the Times noted. “Even if [the July 26] deadline was met, the government’s work to address the effects of the family separation policy was far from over. The parents who were deemed eligible for reunification represent only about a third of all those who were separated from their children after crossing the border.”“[M]ore than 700 children weren’t approved for reunification for reasons that included worries about a parent’s criminal history and other safety concerns. The government also said 431 parents have been deported and officials said they would work with the court to figure out a process to facilitate reunification,” The Wall Street Journal reported.“The Trump administration is trying to sweep them under the rug by unilaterally picking and choosing who is eligible for reunification,” Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, said. “We will continue to hold the government accountable and get these families back together.”*****************************************************July 27, 2018One day after a court-ordered deadline to reunite separated migrant children, Trump administration lawyers tell Judge Dana M. Sabraw that approximately 1,440 children have been reunited with their parents and that around 1,000 of those families face immediate deportation orders. The government had either reunified approximately 1,820 children with their parents or put them in the care of other family members or sponsors, the government lawyers said.The judge said that the government deserved “great credit" for its actions to reunify more than 1,800 separated children. But, blaming flaws in the system, he pointed out that hundreds of families had yet to be reunited. He said that the government was “at fault for losing several hundred parents in the process," referencing the deportation of hundreds of parents without their children. (The missing parent number was believed to be 431, according to court filings.)* * *CNN’s Catherine E. Shoichet reports that immigrant advocacy groups are gearing up to track down more than 400 parents who had been separated from their children and deported without them. The challenge was “daunting,” she ernment statistics indicated that of approximately 430 parents from parents were likely to have been separated without their children. Officials maintained that before that happened, the parents consented.“It's true,” Shoichet reported, “that some parents do make the harrowing choice to be deported without their kids; they may decide it's the best option for their families -- and the only way for their children to survive. But the ACLU and other immigrant rights groups argue that parents were coerced into signing paperwork they didn't understand.”Once parents were located, Shoichet noted, “the logistics of coordinating reunions could take months.”*****************************************************July 31, 2018The Senate Judiciary Committee, holds a hearing on the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy. With more than 500 children still separated despite a court-ordered deadline to reunite them, the focus of the hearing was family separation."We're here today because the Trump Administration has engaged in ... a deeply immoral and haphazard policy that fundamentally betrays American values,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, the ranking member on the Judiciary Committee, said.Senator Richard Durbin blamed lack of planning for the difficulty in reunifying families. "It's hard to imagine. The United States of America says, ‘We're going to start separating kids forcibly from their parents. We're not going to set up a system of tracking those kids so we can find them or match them back up with their parents. We're just going to separate them.’ There were some very basic ways that we could have kept track of the children and parents." he said.Durbin said he wanted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign, saying the policy shows "the extremes this administration will go to punish families fleeing" horrible conditions. Someone in this administration has to accept responsibility."Senator Chuck Grassley, the committee chair, conceded that the administration had "mishandled” the family separations. “Like many well-intentioned policies, there were unintended consequences," he said.Responding to allegations that separated migrant children were kept behind bars in detention, Matthew Albence, Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), described the "family residential centers" where children were housed as "more like a summer camp" because of 24/7 access to food and water, educational and recreational opportunities and medical care. That prompted Senator Mazie Hirono, Democrat of Hawaii, to ask if Albence would send his children to one of the centers. He did not directly answer, but said he was “very comfortable” with immigrants’ treatment.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked Acting Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official Matthew Albence, Health and Human Services official Jonathan White, Justice Department official James McHenry, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official Jennifer Higgins when they each learned of the zero tolerance policy and its implications for migrant families. Each said they found out on or about April 6, 2018, the day Attorney General Jeff Sessions made a speech declaring that the Trump administration would start prosecuting every immigrant crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally, including those with children. White said he learned of the zero tolerance policy from television.White admitted that there had been concerns about the policy. “During the deliberative process over the previous year, we raised a number of concerns in the [Office of Refugee Resettlement] program about any policy which would result in family separation due to concerns we had about the best interest of the child as well as about whether that would be operationally supportable with the bed capacity that we have," he said."There's no question that separation of children from parents entails significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child," White said.White said 429 children have not been reunited with their parents because their parents were deported. He said there was no official deadline for reunifying these children but said "my preferred deadline for my team is absolutely as quickly as humanly possible.”The Washington Post reported that Democratic members of the committee ‘appeared dumbstruck at the defensive statements and said the Trump administration had created a situation at the border that was like a Kafka novel.”Interviewed after the hearing by CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room," Senator Richard Blumenthal said:I found these explanations -- the attempt to explain the continued separation of children -- absolutely outrageous and incredible. … One of the career officials [Jonathan White] told e and the committee that it was the result of a deliberative process that actually took account of the pain and trauma that would be inflicted on these children. … [He testified that] the highest levels knew about the concerns that he and the other career officials raised about this policy. …"From the day that I went to the border, which was now six weeks ago, there has been no plan, no system to reunite these children. It amounts to official kidnapping."*****************************************************August 3, 2018Judge Dana M. Sabraw rejects a Trump administration effort to shift the burden of tracking down hundreds of migrant parents deported without their children to the American Civil Liberties Union and other non-profits and charities.On August 2, Trump administration attorneys filed a request in U.S. District Court in southern California, arguing that the ACLU and various charities should carry the burden of finding the migrant parents deported without their children under the government’s zero-tolerance policy. The administration said in the court filing that that the ACLU should use its “considerable resources” and "network of law firms, NGOs, volunteers and others" to find the approximately 450 parents, using information from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). ACLU lawyers argued that the Trump administration is trying to shirk its responsibility by passing off the task of reunification to private groups despite its own considerable resources.“For every parent that is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child and that is a hundred percent the result of the administration,” Judge Sabraw said in his ruling. "The reality is there are close to 500 parents that have not been located. Many have been removed from the country without their child," he continued. "All of this is the result of the government’s separation and failure to track and reunite” the families.Sabraw said he planned to file an order in the coming days requiring the government to continue providing information and updates and to assign a competent leader to take charge.*****************************************************August 9, 2018In a status report to the U.S. District Court in San Diego, the Trump administration updates its figures on its efforts to reunite children separated from migrant parents at the border. It was reported that of 2,551 separated children, 559 are still apart from their parents, 386 of whom have been deported. Officials had heard from 299 of the parents abroad in the past week.The government, represented in the filing by the U.S. Department of Justice, stated that it had essentially lost track of the deported parents of 26 separated children.*****************************************************August 16, 2018HuffPost’s Carla Herreria reports that “only a small fraction of the nearly 600 migrant children reported to still be in the custody of the U.S. government at the beginning of the month have been reunified with their families,” according to a status update filed in the U.S. District Court in San Diego by Justice Department lawyers. A total of 565 children, including 24 who are younger than age 5, remained in government-contracted shelters, separated from their parents.The government said the children who remained in custody were not reunified with family because their parents had been deported, had failed a background check or had yet to be located. According to Thursday’s court filings, the parents of 366 detained migrant children were outside the U.S. and have not had the chance to be reunited.*****************************************************August 21, 2018“More Than 500 Children Are Still Separated. Here’s What Comes Next” (blog), by Amrit Cheng, Former Communications Strategist, ACLU:It’s been nearly one month since the federal court's deadline for the Trump administration to reunite separated families, but hundreds of children are still waiting. In fact, as of 12:00 pm on August 16, 565 immigrant children remained in government custody.For 366 of those children, including six who are under the age of 5, reunion is made all the more complicated by the fact that the government already deported their parents -- without a plan for how they would be ever be located.After forcefully rejecting the government’s assertion that the ACLU is solely responsible for finding deported parents -- rather than say, the administration who deported them -- the court has ordered both us and the administration to create a plan to locate and reunite deported parents with their children.Here’s what you need to know about it.Who is looking for the parents?At the court’s order, the government appointed agency leads for the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, the State Department, and Justice Department.In order to aid in the effort to locate the hundreds of parents whom the government deported without their children, we’ve formed a steering committee … to locate and reunify parents who have been removed from the United States or released from ICE custody into the United States without their children. Our partners, Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC),and Justice in Motion will serve as members of the Steering Committee, and will … facilitate communication regarding the wishes of parents and children who are still separated, and provide in-country support for locating deported parents.Has the government provided the information that the ACLU needs?Roughly two weeks ago, the government finally turned over a list of phone numbers for the majority of deported parents. … Unfortunately, thus far, many of the phone numbers have been inoperable. … It certainly doesn’t help that the government may have had this information for more than a month before handing it over to us. …Every additional day that children wait to be with their parents is damaging -- it’s simple unacceptable that the government had information that could help reunite them faster but sat on it.Where will the families be reunited?The government has argued that families can only be reunited in their countries of origin. This means that children who have a current asylum claim may have to forfeit theirs in order be reunited with their parents. If their parents don’t want them to lose the opportunity to seek protection in the U.S., children will have to navigate the asylum system without their parents, while bearing the weight of continued separation.Parents who may have been misled or coerced into signing away their asylum rights will be left without redress.*****************************************************August 22, 2018In a New Yorker article, Jonathan Blitzer writes: “To date, no one in the Trump Administration has been held accountable for its family-separation policy, even after evidence has steadily mounted as to its immense human costs and administrative failures. The government’s own data show that it has had no appreciable effect on migration patterns throughout the summer, but the Administration pursued the policy anyway, targeting immigrant families.”According to Blitzer’s article, “the prime movers” behind zero tolerance were members of a “cabal of anti-immigration guys” at the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of Justice. The “anti-immigration guys” were led by Stephen Miller and Gene Hamilton, a Justice Department adviser. “They want to have a different America, and they’re succeeding.”Blitzer: “I asked the current Administration official whether the outcry over family separation had caught the government by surprise. It had, the official said. ‘The expectation was that the kids would go to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, that the parents would get deported, and that no one would care.’ Yet, when it became clear that the public did, the Administration chose not to change course.”*****************************************************August 23, 2018In a complaint filed by the American Immigration Council and American Immigration Lawyers Association with the Department of Homeland Security, it is alleged that, before the family reunification process mandated by district court judge Dana M. Sabraw began, government officials coerced mothers and fathers who were separated from their children into signing documents that waived their rights.It was alleged in the complaint that immigration agents used "abusive tactics and deplorable conditions" to pressure parents to sign forms without an understanding of the repercussions.According to NPR:154 parents elected on paper to be deported without their children, according to a recent status report. Some chose to leave their children behind because they wanted them to have better lives in the United States, federal officials say. But the immigration attorneys tell a very different story.Initially, the “Election Form” was only available in English, and some parents who couldn't understand the language had no idea they were giving up their rights to be reunited with their children, the complaint said.”For a time, the form also lacked an option for parents to speak with an attorney. Some Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers allegedly did not inform parents that they could both pursue their asylum claims and be reunified with their children. They also brought families together with pre-completed forms and then separated those who refused to sign them, the complaint said. …A Honduran woman, separated from her 9-year-old daughter, was allegedly placed in solitary confinement for 10 days and "subject to starvation" for trying to speak with a visitor. "I was put in a dark room, so I did not know when it was day or night," she said. "I was not given food or water for about three days."Another detained mother, from Guatemala, gave testimony on the manipulative tactics an agent used on her. "An immigration officer told me to sign a paper if I wanted to see my daughters again. When I asked him what the paper was for he hid it behind his back and said, 'It doesn't matter what it says. You are going to sign it anyway.' He told me I would never speak to my daughters again if I did not sign it."According to the complaint, 23 of 76 mothers that the attorneys surveyed said they were told that either their children would be adopted or they would never see them again if they did not sign a document. …Homeland Security has maintained that no intimidation was used, that parents signed deportation papers of their own free will.*****************************************************August 24, 2018CNN’s Tal Kopan reports on “the slow pace of reuniting the trickiest family separation cases” -- roughly 700 children who were separated from their parents at the border having not been reunified, including more than 40 children who were four years old and younger. “While the administration maintains there is a suitable explanation for each of those cases,” she noted, “the filing makes clear that a large share of those children remain separated because their parents were deported without them. … The filing also makes clear that the administration’s accounting methods are painting a rosier picture of the pace of reunification than the ACLU’s.”According to the list given to the ACLU by the government, Kopan reported, 412 parents were deported without their children -- a group that presented the most difficult problem in the reunification process. The tabulation “makes the number seem smaller by only counting the children still in custody with deported parents, rather than the total number of parents who were deported,” she wrote.There was disagreement between officials and the ACLU over how many parents had been actually found.*****************************************************September 6, 2018The Trump administration proposes to effectively end the Flores Settlement, which dictated how long the government can hold migrant children, and under what conditions. Under the Flores Settlement, children could not be held in jail-like settings and there were sharp limits (in effect aa the time of the administration’s proposed rule modification) on how long the government could detain children. The Justice Department asked a federal court for permission "to detain alien families together throughout the pendency of criminal proceedings for improper entry or any removal or other immigration proceedings."The administration had, in effect -- since the family separation policy was implemented and resulted in widespread opposition -- blamed restrictions imposed by the Flores Settlement, including a 20-day limit on the detention of children, for the family separation policy. The proposed change in the rules would allow the government to detain parents and children, or children who enter the country without adults, for the duration of their immigration court cases. Such cases, Bloomberg’s Jennifer Epstein noted, “on average, take years to complete.”Under the terms of the Flores Settlement, children had been released with their parents after 20 days. The Trump administration had sought to get around the rule by separating parents from their children and holding parents in detention while children were placed in the care of Health and Human Services.*****************************************************September 18, 2018In a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing, Matthew Albence, acting deputy director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations unit, says he stands by controversial comments he made at a Senate hearing in July comparing detention centers for immigrant families to "summer camp.”Senator Kamala Harris asked Albence if he stood by his previous statement.Albence responded, "Absolutely I do.""You believe they're like summer camps?" Harris asked again."I believe the standards at which they're kept are very safe, they're humane …," Albence said.Harris interjected, asking: "Do you have children or do you know children that have attended summer camp? Would you send your children to one of these detention centers?"Albence said the question was "not applicable." Instead, he described having visited a detention center several weeks ago, asserting: "What we saw there was children receiving excellent medical care. We saw children playing in the gymnasium, we saw families sitting at computers in a library that was well-stocked, we saw a cafeteria that was spotless, with unlimited amounts of food.""They live in dormitory settings with televisions, Xboxes and a host of other recreational opportunities," Albence added."But you can understand the concern to suggest it's like a summer camp would suggest it's like a parent would voluntarily send their child to a place like that to have a good time for the summer," Harris responded.Albence claimed the senator was "missing the point.”He added: "They put themselves in this position. They made the illegal entry into the country. That is why they are there."*****************************************************October 2, 2018A “Special Review,” “Initial Observations Regarding Family Separation Issues Under the Zero Tolerance Policy,” is issued by the Office of Inspector General (OIG), Department of Homeland Security.Key findings:DHS was not fully prepared to implement the Administration’s Zero Tolerance Policy or to deal with some of its after-effects. Faced with resource limitations and other challenges, DHS regulated the number of asylum-seekers entering the country through ports of entry at the same time that it encouraged asylum-seekers to come to the ports. During Zero Tolerance, CBP also held alien children separated from their parents for extended periods in facilities intended solely for short-term detention.DHS also struggled to identify, track, and reunify families separated under Zero Tolerance due to limitations with its information technology systems, including a lack of integration between systems.DHS provided inconsistent information to aliens who arrived with children during Zero Tolerance, which resulted in some parents not understanding that they would be separated from their children, and being unable to communicate with their children after separation.Highlights of the OIG review, which got wide publicity, were summarized in various news stories. “The administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ crackdown at the border this spring was troubled from the outset by planning shortfalls, widespread communication failures and administrative indifference to the separation of small children from their parents,” The Washington Post reported.DHS computer systems were unable to track family members separated at the Mexican border and the agency held migrant children in detention centers far longer than the law allowed. The OIG review found that at least 860 migrant children were left in Border Patrol holding cells longer than the 72-hour limit mandated by U.S. courts, with one minor confined for 12 days and another for 25.Officials gave inconsistent information to migrant parents arriving at the border, so some parents did not understand that they would be separated from their children. A poorly coordinated interagency process, OIG investigators found, left distraught parents with little or no knowledge of their children’s whereabouts. In some instances, officials were forced to share minors’ files on Microsoft Word documents sent as email attachments because the government’s internal systems couldn’t communicate.Border Patrol did not provide pre-verbal children with wrist bracelets or other means of identification, nor did it fingerprint or photograph most children during processing to ensure that they can be easily linked with the proper file, the OIG review found.*****************************************************October 11, 2018Amnesty International issues a report which found that the Trump administration had separated far more immigrant families than it has publicly admitted. Amnesty reported that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) forcibly separated more than 6,000 family units between mid-April and mid-August 2018 under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy. That number, the report said, “excluded countless other families whose separations were not recorded.”Drawing on data from the previous two years, Amnesty also reported that the administration had separated an additional 1,800 family units before April 2018. In total, it concluded, approximately 8,000 family units have been torn apart after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.*****************************************************October 12, 2018The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is actively considering plans “that could again separate parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border, hoping to reverse soaring numbers of families attempting to cross illegally into the United States.”Administration officials told the Post that senior White House adviser Stephen Miller was advocating for tougher measures because he believes the separations carried out in the spring of 2018 worked as an effective deterrent to illegal crossings.In addition to considering “binary choice” and other options, officials had already proposed new rules that would allow them to withdraw from the Flores Settlement under which ICE was barred from keeping children in custody for more than 20 days.*****************************************************October 13, 2018In comments to reporters at the White House, President Trump says that he is considering several options to tighten border security. He seemed to support the argument, made by some administration officials, that the policy under which children were separated from their parents was needed to secure the border and deter illegal immigration. “If they feel there will be separation, they don't come," he told reporters.He stopped short, however, of committing to a new round of family separations. "We're looking at a lot of different things having to do with illegal immigration," he said, again calling on Congress to pass immigration legislation. "We're going to do whatever we can do to get it slowed down."Trump was responding to a Washington Post report that the administration was actively considering plans that could again separate parents and children at the border.*****************************************************October 14, 2018Interviewed by Lesley Stahl on CBS’s "60 Minutes," President Trump was asked whether the administration plans to separate migrant families again."When you allow the parents to stay together, OK, when you allow that, then what happens is people are gonna pour into our country," Trump said."So are you gonna go back to that?" Stahl asked.The administration is "looking at a lot of things," Trump replied.Stahl pressed the President to give a "yes or no" answer on whether the administration plans to return to separating migrant families."I will only -- I can't -- you can't say yes or no," Trump said. "What I can say is this: There are consequences from coming into a country, namely our country, illegally."*****************************************************October 15, 2018Newsweek’s Ramsey Touchberry reports that nearly three months after the court-ordered deadline set by Judge Dana M. Sabraw to reunite thousands of migrant children separated from their parents as a consequence of the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy, hundreds of children remain within the federal government's care.A new court filing by the administration on October 15 showed that 244 children were still not reunited with their parents, some of whom are under 5. Of those still separated, 175 children have already had their parents deported.*****************************************************October 18, 2018Nearly four months after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite families separated at the border, 245 children remain in government custody, according to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, which was based on an analysis of government data.“It’s taking forever, and it shouldn’t be taking this long,” said the ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt,. “It is an enormous task, but on the other hand, it’s the United States government. When they really prioritize something, they can get it done.”*****************************************************October 24, 2018The Trump administration did not tell key government agencies about its zero tolerance immigration policy before publicly announcing it in April, leaving the officials responsible for carrying it out unprepared to handle the resulting separations of thousands of children from their families, according to a report released by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). Key findings:Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials interviewed by GEO said their agencies did not plan for the potential increase in the number of children separated from their parent or legal guardian as a result of the Attorney General’ Sessions’s April 6, 2018 zero tolerance memo. These officials told GAO that they were unaware of the memo in advance of its public release. The Attorney General’s memo directed Department of Justice prosecutors to accept for criminal prosecution all referrals from DHS of offenses related to improper entry into the United States, to the extent practicable. As a result, parents were placed in criminal detention, and their children were placed in the custody of HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement.In April and July 2018, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), respectively, updated their databases to allow them to indicate whether a child was separated. However, it is too soon to know the extent to which these changes, if fully implemented, will consistently indicate when children have been separated from their parents, or will help reunify families.In response to a June 26, 2018 court order to quickly reunify children separated from their parents, HHS determined how many children in its care were subject to the order and developed procedures for reunifying these families. The government identified 2,654 children in ORR custody who potentially met reunification criteria. On July 10, 2018, the court approved reunification procedures for the parents covered by the June 2018 court order. This order noted that ORR’s standard procedures used to release UACs from its care to sponsors were not meant to apply to this case, in which parents and children who were apprehended together were separated by government officials. DHS and HHS officials and staff at the ORR shelters GAO visited noted some challenges to reunification, including arranging communication between parent and child and coordinating transportation. As of September 10, 2018, 437 children remained in ORR custody for various reasons, such as ineligibility for reunification.“This disturbing GAO report shows the tragic consequences of carrying out a cruel and misguided policy impacting thousands of families without any preparation or prior notification to the agencies charged with implementing it,” Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr., who had requested the audit, said in a statement.*****************************************************November 14, 2018In a brief letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, 26 House Democrats call on her to resign. The letter read in part:You are responsible for the unimaginable trauma of thousands of children across the United States. From the children torn from their parents at the border, to Dreamers facing exile from their home, and to the U.S. citizen children who face losing a parent to deportation; your actions continue to wreak havoc on communities across this nation. In order to restore our values and the public’s trust in the DHS, we demand your resignation and urge the reversal of the policies implemented at DHS and DOJ designed to destroy families.The evidence is clear. During your tenure as DHS Secretary, you have inflicted real harm on children and families coming to the United States, immigrant youth growing up in communities across the country, and U.S. citizen children born to immigrant parents. These actions have ruined the moral credibility of the United States and are an affront to American values. For these reasons, we ask that you immediately resign.*****************************************************November 15, 2018During a confirmation hearing to become the director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Ronald D. Vitiello, the acting director of the agency, is grilled by Democratic members of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. He was asked about reports that the government is considering a new proposal that would again separate migrant children from their parents.Senator Gary Peters asked Vitiello whether the administration was considering a modified deterrence policy proposal that would again lead to family separation, in which apprehended migrant parents would be forced to choose between voluntarily relinquishing their children to foster care or opting to remain in custody together and waiving their children's right to be released from detention within 20 days (as guaranteed by the Flores Settlement). Vitiello confirmed that a "discussion is underway" within the administration on the proposal. When asked by Senator Peters if he supported the policy, Vitiello noted that "it is a way for people to have a due process opportunity and remain in custody.""Are you aware that there's a perception that ICE is administering its power in a way that is causing fear and intimidation -- particularly among immigrants and specifically among immigrants coming from Mexico and Central America?" Senator Kamala Harris asked Vitiello. She also pressed Vitiello on an ICE from December of last year that effectively ended the practice of auto-releasing pregnant women from ICE detention. Asked for the number of pregnant women in ICE custody, including those in their final trimester of pregnancy, Vitiello said he did not have statistics with him, but that the number is "very small." He added that detention of women in their third trimester is "rare."Senator Maggie Hassan asked Vitiello if he was aware of the psychological trauma that could be inflicted on children if they are separated from their families. "I would like, like I said earlier, that we weren't in a situation where large numbers of families with children are approaching the border," Vitiello replied. "But that's not the situation that we're in."Senator Hassan accused Vitiello of portraying children as "tools" to punish their parents who cross the border illegally. "We have the capacity in the United States of America to control our borders without harming children," she said.*****************************************************December 8, 2018Jakelin Caal, a 7-year-old girl from Guatemala, dies of dehydration and shock while in U.S. Border Patrol custody. Her death is first reported by The Washington Post on December 13, at which time the girl’s name had not been disclosed.TIMELINE"After completing a days-long, dangerous journey through remote and barren terrain” (as per a Facebook post by the Department of Homeland Security), Jakelin Caal Maquin was apprehended on the evening of December 6 with her father for illegal entry as part of a group of 163 immigrants, about half a mile west of a port of entry in New Mexico.Jakelin and her father, Nery Caal, were part of a group of detainees who are transferred -- at around 5 a.m. on December 7 -- to a larger Border Patrol station further north, in Lordsburg, New Mexico, about 90 minutes away. As group was preparing to leave, Jakelin’s father reported that she had become sick and was vomiting. Jakelin was not reported as sick after an initial screening by a Border Patrol agent. Her father did not state that she was ill when they were apprehended.When Jakelin arrived in Lordsburg, she was not breathing. An emergency response team of technicians and paramedics revived her twice. She was airlifted to a hospital in El Paso, Texas, and died at Providence Children’s Hospital from dehydration, sepsis hock and liver failure.A timeline posted on Customs and Border Protection’s website added that the child went into cardiac arrest at the hospital and was revived; that a CT scan revealed brain swelling; and that she was breathing by machine and diagnosed with liver failure.Jakelin’s family later disputed some of the claims surrounding her death. Through a Dec. 15 statement, they said Caal Maquin had not been crossing the desert for days and that her father "made sure she was fed and had sufficient water."*****************************************************December 13-14, 2018From various news reports:Customs and Border Protection said it was expecting an autopsy on Jakelin Caal, but that results would not likely be available for several weeks."As we have always said, traveling north is extremely dangerous," a spokesman with the Department of Homeland Security said. "Unfortunately, despite our best efforts and the best efforts of the medical team treating the child, we were unable to stop this tragedy from occurring."No one should risk injury, or even death, by crossing our border unlawfully," U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin K. McAleenan said. "This is why I asked Congress on Tuesday to change our laws so that the United States is not incentivizing families to take this dangerous path."Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said on Fox News that the girl's death was heart-wrenching and a sad example of the dangers of crossing the border. She said the girl's group was 90 miles from where it could be processed and a few trips were needed to get such a large group over to processing. "This family chose to cross illegally," Nielsen said. "We'll continue to look into the situation, but, again, I cannot stress enough how dangerous this journey (is) when migrants choose to come here illegally."White House deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley said the administration did not take responsibility for what he called “a horrific, tragic situation.” “Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country?” a reporter asked on Friday, to which Gidley responded, “No.”“The girl's death raises questions about whether border agents knew she was ill and whether she was fed anything or given anything to drink during the eight-plus hours she was in custody,” the Associated Press reported.The American Civil Liberties Union blamed “lack of accountability, and a culture of cruelty within CBP” for the girl’s death. “The fact that it took a week for this to come to light shows the need for transparency for CBP. We call for a rigorous investigation into how this tragedy happened and serious reforms to prevent future deaths,” Cynthia Pompa, advocacy manager for the ACLU Border Rights Center, said in a statement.* * *In an interview with reporters on December 14, Trump administration officials defend their actions in the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin. A Customs and Border Protection official told reporters on a conference call that the Jakein’s father, Nery Caal, had signed a form that said that the girl was not sick, and that the four Border Patrol agents supervising the group of 163 migrants they were with didn’t identify any health or safety concerns.“The agents did as they were required to do according to policies and asked the questions they needed to ask of her and her father,” the official said.But a Guatemalan government official said the form was in English and that Border Patrol agents’ explanations of the form in Spanish also may have been inadequate, since the father speaks an indigenous Mayan language.*****************************************************December 15, 2018Nery Gilberto Caal Cruz, the father of Jakelin Caal Maquin, disputes the assertion made by Customs and Border Protection officials that his daughter had not eaten or consumed water for several days before being detained by the Border Patrol.Jakelin’s father “made sure she was fed and had sufficient water,” his lawyers said in a statement. Mr. Caal Cruz said that Jakelin was in good health when she was detained at the border.Jakelin’s family said it was seeking an investigation of her death.*****************************************************December 17, 2018In an interview on WGBH, Boston, U.S. Representative Seth Moulton blames Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for Jakelin Caal Maquin’s death and calls for her to resign. “It’s very clear that this president and his secretary of homeland security have set a tone where it’s okay to just let a girl like that die,” he said.*****************************************************December 18, 2018After touring the U.S. Border Patrol facilities in Lordsburg, New Mexico where Jakelin Caal Maquin died on December 8, House Democrats call for a congressional investigation into the girl’s death.A member of the Congressional delegation, Representative Joaquín Castro, issued a call for the resignation of Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan because of McAleenan’s failure to speedily report the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin while she was in border officials' custody. Castro said McAleenan told him he didn’t want to politicize the death in front of Congress, which is why the commissioner didn’t make members aware of the death immediately. He said CBP officials are required by law to inform members of Congress about the girl’s death within 24 hours but failed to do so.The members of the Congressional delegation were not allowed to interview the agents who interacted with Jakelin.*****************************************************December 19, 2018Jakelin Caal Maquin and her father, Nery Gilberto Caal Cruz, were not provided water during the eight hours they were held in a Border Patrol facility with 161 other migrants, the family’s lawyers say, contradicting statements by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.The lawyers also said Border Patrol agents Jakein’s father with English-language documents, which he signed in the hours after her death on December 8, raising the possibility that U.S. authorities sought an agreement -- as he was grieving -- to voluntarily leave the country.“CBP referred questions to its previous statements that food and water were provided and the child consumed both. Officials declined to answer questions about what forms Caal may have signed after his daughter’s death,” The Washington Post reported.*****************************************************December 20, 2018Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is grilled at a House Judiciary Committee hearing.Responding to questions from Representative Hank Johnson about the death of Jakelin Caal Maquin (who died on December 8), Nielsen said that her staff was first notified about the matter on Dec. 8 and she received a “full readout email” on Dec. 13."Jackie did not have to die," Representative Sheila Jackson said, questioning why there were not more medical and language services immediately available at the time. "These are human beings!"Nielsen claimed that Jakelin’s father did not indicate any health concerns at first, saying Customs and Border Protection revived the girl twice before they got her to a hospital."To put this in perspective, this is exactly why we try to encourage migrants to go a port of entry. Unfortunately, they arrived in the middle of the night in the middle of nowhere," she said. "As soon as [the father] indicated there was a health issue, we did what we could do as quickly as possible to get her to medical care ... the men and women of CBP did everything they could do."Nielsen was asked by Representative David Cicilline how many people had died in DHS’s custody; she could not give an exact figure.“Madame Secretary, did I understand you correctly to say that as you sit here today, you do not know how many human beings have died while in custody of the department that you lead, and in preparation for today’s hearing, you didn’t ascertain that number?” Cicilline asked.“I don’t have an exact figure for you,” Nielsen replied.“Do you have a rough idea?” Cicilline followed up.“Sir, what I can tell you is --”Cicilline cut her off, saying, “I’m talking about people who have died in your custody. You don’t have the number?”“I will get back to you with the number,” Nielsen said.“Nielsen … had difficulty explaining how the Trump administration’s family separation policy squares with a tweet she posted in June claiming that no such policy existed,” Vox reportedRepresentative Luis Gutierrez walked out of the hearing after castigating Nielsen."Shame on everybody that separates children and allows them to stay at the other side of the border fearing death, fearing hunger, fearing sickness. Shame on us for wearing our badge of Christianity during Christmas for allowing the secretary to come here and lie,” Gutierrez said."Calling me a liar are fighting words," Nielsen said. "I'm not a liar. We've never had a policy for family separation."A family separation policy, she said, "would mean that any family that I found at a port of entry I would separate, it would mean that every single family that I found illegally crossing, we would separate. We did none of those."*****************************************************December 24, 2018Felipe Gómez Alonzo, an 8-year old Guatemalan boy in custody of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), dies at Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center in Alamogordo, New Mexico.TIMELINEFelipe and his father, Agustin Gómez, are apprehended for illegal entry on December 18 about three miles west of a port of entry in El Paso, TexasAfter their arrival, Felipe and his father were placed in various immigration facilities. On December 22, U.S. Border Patrol transferred them to the Alamogordo Border Patrol Station “to finalize processing. The child and his father were transferred because of capacity levels at the El Paso Station.”On the morning of December 24, an agent “noticed that the child was coughing and appeared to have glossy eyes.” Felipe and his father were transferred to Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center “with possible influenza symptoms.” The hospital staff diagnosed Felipe with a common cold. He Felipe was found to have a 103 degree fever. Felipe was held for about an hour and a half for continued observation and was released in the afternoon from the emergency room with a prescription for amoxicillin and Ibuprofen.That evening, Felipe became nauseous, appeared lethargic, and was vomiting. A decision was made to return Felipe and his father to Gerald Champion Regional Medical Center. During transportation to the hospital, Felipe was lost consciousness. Upon his arrival at the hospital, hospital staff were unable to revive Felipe and pronounced him deceased.*****************************************************December 25, 2018U.S. Representative-elect Xochitl Torres Small called for a thorough and transparent investigation into the deaths of Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Gómez Alonzo and for more medical resources along the border. "On this Christmas morning, we lost another child along our border," she said in a statement. “Jakelin, like this young boy, died while in the custody of Customs and Border Protection. This is inexcusable. … Children dying in the custody of the United States of America is unacceptable. It has to stop now."U.S. Senator Tom Udall said in a statement: "We can never become desensitized to children dying in U.S. custody. We need a full investigation to determine how such a horrible tragedy could happen, and we need to build a humane system that protects the most vulnerable among us. There are indeed grave humanitarian issues that extend well beyond our borders -- and they will not be resolved by border walls and anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric."U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich tweeted: "[T]he Trump administration must be held accountable for this child’s death and all the lives they have put in danger with their intentional chaos and disregard for human life."*****************************************************December 26, 2018Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen releases a statement on the death of Felipe Gómez Alonzo:In the evening hours of December 24th, a child who had been apprehended with his father by the Border Patrol attempting to illegally enter the United States, died at an El Paso hospital after being taken for emergency treatment for the second time in less than 12 hours. This tragedy, the death of a child in government custody is deeply concerning and heartbreaking. In the last 24 hours, I have a directed a series of additional actions to care for those who enter our custody.In recent months, we have seen a dramatic increase at the border of families and unaccompanied children crossing our border illegally. … This is a dramatic change from historical trends and has only become starker in December.This changing dynamic is the direct result of obvious draw factors: an immigration system that rewards parents for sending their children across the border alone, a system that prevents parents who bring their children on a dangerous and illegal journey from facing consequences for their actions, an asylum process that is not able to quickly help those who qualify for asylum, a system that encourages fraudulent claims, and a system that encourages bad actors to coach aliens into making frivolous claims. …Our system has been pushed to a breaking point by those who seek open borders. Smugglers, traffickers, and their own parents put these minors at risk by embarking on the dangerous and arduous journey north. This crisis is exacerbated by the increase in persons who are entering our custody suffering from severe respiratory illnesses or exhibit some other illness upon apprehension. Given the remote locations of their illegal crossing and the lack of resources, it is even more difficult for our personnel to be first responders. … it has been more than a decade since CBP has had a child pass away in their custody. It is now clear that migrants, particularly children, are increasingly facing medical challenges and harboring illness caused by their long and dangerous journey.In response to the unprecedented surge of children into our custody, I have directed a series of extraordinary protective measures. I have personally engaged with the Centers for Disease Control to request that their experts investigate the uptick in sick children crossing our borders and identify additional steps hospitals along the border should be undertaking to prepare for and to treat these children. I have asked the U.S. Coast Guard Medical Corps to provide an assessment of CBP’s medical programs and make appropriate recommendations for improvements. I have also asked for assistance from the Department of Defense to provide additional medical professionals.At my direction, all children in Border Patrol custody have been given a thorough medical screening. Moving forward, all children will receive a more thorough hands on assessment at the earliest possible time post apprehension – whether or not the accompanying adult has asked for one. …I will be travelling to the border later this week to see first-hand the medical screenings and conditions at Border Patrol stations.These immediate steps described above are in addition to steps taken following the death of a Guatemalan child [Jakelin Caal Maquin] earlier in the month – to include the staffing of additional Emergency Management trained Border Patrol agents in remote areas. There are 1,500 medically trained agents and officers on duty across the border.As a result of bad judicial rulings from activist judges and inaction by Congress, we are seeing a flood of family units and unaccompanied alien children. The unprecedented number of families and unaccompanied children at the border must not be ignored. I once again ask – beg – parents to not place their children at risk by taking a dangerous journey north. Vulnerable populations – including family units and unaccompanied alien children should seek asylum at the first possible opportunity, including Mexico.To be clear, Border Patrol stations were never intended to be longer-term holding facilities for any individuals. Under current law, non-Mexican unaccompanied children cannot be released or removed from the U.S. – they must be turned over to Health and Human Services for placement pending bed space availability. Moreover, family units are almost always released into the interior – in any case, they cannot be held past 21 days.I am proud of the lifesaving work the men and women of the Border Patrol do every day, but we do not currently have the resources we need to execute the mission as directed by Congress. To those in Congress who continue to refuse to take action to address the loopholes that cause a flood of humanity to travel north and place children at risk, I once again call on you to do your job, protect vulnerable populations, secure our borders, and provide the men and women of DHS the authorities and resources we need to address this crisis. Please put politics aside, we have common cause – let’s work together to protect family units and unaccompanied alien children.* * *US Customs and Border Protection orders medical checks on every child in its custody after the second death of a child in the agency's care during December.Interviewed on “CBS This Morning.” CBP commissioner Kevin McAleenan said the agency needs a “different approach” after the death of Felipe Gómez Alonzo. "We need help from Congress,” McAleenan said.“We need to budget for medical care and mental health care for children in our facilities and I'm committed to improving our conditions, even as we work on the broader problems--border security, and of course solving the issues in our legal framework that are inviting these families and children to make this dangerous journey,” he added.* * *Business Insider’s Michelle Mark reports that Felipe Gómez Alonzo, who died on December 24, was detained for nearly a full week, against the Customs and Border Protection's own rules.*****************************************************December 27, 2018Infectious disease experts say it appears that Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, who died on December 24, likely had the flu, a potentially deadly illness that can often be treated if caught early enough.U.S. Customs and Border Protection had issued a statement on December 25 saying that Felipe had "possible influenza symptoms." The CBP statement did not mention a flu test being administered to Felipe. CBP did not respond to a question from a CNN reporter about whether Felipe had received a flu test."This child's death could have been prevented," said Dr. Flor Mu?oz, an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told CNN.Mu?oz and another pediatric infectious disease expert contacted by CNN said they would have tested Felipe for the flu if he had been their patient, given that it's flu season and he had symptoms of influenza."Flu can be a relatively mild illness, but it can also kill children very quickly," Dr. Buddy Creech, an infectious disease specialist and associate professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said.‘Flu can be treated with antiviral medications, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Doctors can also treat potentially deadly complications of the flu, such as dehydration and secondary bacterial infections,” CNN reported.”* * *In a report by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, it is stated that Felipe Gomez-Alonzo had tested positive for influenza B. The medical investigator's office cautioned in a statement that the cause of death for Felipe’s death was still under investigation, but it was determined that he had been suffering from the flu.Dr. Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said that while a cause of death has yet to be determined and many details are unknown, Felipe’s death highlighted the need for pediatric-trained personnel at CBP facilities. “This child wasn’t appreciated to be as ill as he was,” she said.Kraft added that while she was not faulting the hospital, “clearly his treatment wasn’t adequate.”*****************************************************December 28-29, 2018Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen visits border patrol stations in El Paso, Texas and Yuma, Arizona to see how the agency is conducting medical screenings and to review conditions at Border Patrol stations following the deaths during the month of December of two migrant children in federal custody.Nielsen called on federal courts to enforce existing immigration laws to stem the tide of undocumented migrant families from entering the United States.“The system is clearly overwhelmed and we must work together to address this humanitarian crisis and protect vulnerable populations,” Nielsen said in a statement after her meetings with local and federal officials in El Paso, one of the nation’s busiest border crossing points. “We know that if Congress were to act, or the courts were to enforce the law as written, we could address this crisis tomorrow. Instead we continue to do more with less. … As I have said before, I ask Congress to please put politics aside and recognize this for the growing security and humanitarian crisis it is.”*****************************************************December 29, 2018In a pair of Saturday afternoon tweets, President Trump Blames Democrats Over Deaths of Migrant Children in U.S. Custody:Any deaths of children or others at the Border are strictly the fault of the Democrats and their pathetic immigration policies that allow people to make the long trek thinking they can enter our country illegally. They can’t. If we had a Wall, they wouldn’t even try! The two…..-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2018…children in question were very sick before they were given over to Border Patrol. The father of the young girl said it was not their fault, he hadn’t given her water in days. Border Patrol needs the Wall and it will all end. They are working so hard & getting so little credit!-- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2018* * *Democrats react with outrage after President Trump blames them for the deaths of two migrant children who were in the custody of Customs and Border Protection.In an appearance on MSNBC, U.S. Representative Gerry Connolly, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, accused Trump of lacking "any capacity for human empathy."“The first reaction to the news of a death of a child in our custody ought to be empathy for the family and, frankly, enormous distress that that happened at all. It’s now the second such death," Connolly. "And instead, our president -- who apparently lacks any capacity for human empathy -- decides to use the death of two children as a political tool, something he can hit his opponents with. I think it’s really yet another new low in a president filled with new lows."Trump was accused in a tweet by Representative-elect Harley Rouda of using the children as "political pawns" in his ongoing battle with Congress on immigration reform.*****************************************************December 30, 2018White House adviser Kellyanne Conway defends President Donald Trump's tweets blaming Democrats for the recent deaths of migrant children in U.S. custody and accuses Democrats of using the dead children as "political pawns."Conway acknowledged that "any death of a child, any death of anyone, is an utter tragedy," during an interview on CNN's State of the Union. But she initially deflected questions about Trump's tweets and instead focused on the divide over funds for border security that led to a partial government shutdown.“I think the president’s point is an important one, which is that he has stayed in Washington to negotiate border security,” Conway said when CNN host Dana Bash asked if she defended Trump’s tweets about the children – which did not mention the fact he stayed in Washington.Bash told Conway that while she and other White House aides had expressed “empathy” for the children’s deaths, “the president hasn’t.” "The only thing he has said is something that is very political and, frankly, misleading, with regard to Democrats being culpable for the deaths of children," Bash said.Conway again referred to Democrats' past willingness to fund fencing along the southern border before explaining that the presidents' tweets were referring to policies that he believes are enticing migrants to bring their children to the border. She cited U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics indicating that apprehensions of migrant families and unaccompanied minors had risen dramatically in the preceding two months. "We simply cannot absorb all that. And unfortunately, and very tragically, it does results in some deaths," Conway said."I don't like some of the Democrats using these deaths as political pawns," she added."But isn't that exactly what the president just did?" Bash asked."No, the president is not doing that," Conway replied. "The president does not want these children to come on the perilous journey to begin with. They are paying now –some of them are paying the ultimate price."*****************************************************January 8, 2019Prior to a prime-time address on border security by President Trump (delivered on January 8), counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway is interviewed by Fox News host Harris Faulkner. Commenting, in a preview of the president’s address, about the “sudden increase” among family units and unaccompanied minors trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border, Conway said, “It’s a very dangerous journey for them. We’ve seen many of them are sick or not well, they’re malnourished, they don’t have access to food or water for many days on this journey and two [Jakelin Caal Maquin and Felipe Gómez Alonzo] of course died on this journey, very regretfully, god rest their souls.”“I want to press back a little bit,” Faulkner said. “So, the deaths of those two children, they were in our care, they were in our custody, so we don’t want to blur the line that this happened somewhere on their journey south of the border, that would not be the case.”“No, no, no, no, I didn’t say that,” Conway replied. “Any death of a child is tragic. But we don’t want people taking that perilous journey in the first place. We want them to come here legally.”*****************************************************January 14, 2019In letters to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler requests numerous documents and communications related to the separation of migrant families under the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy, including documents related to the health and safety of children in government custody and a reunification strategy for families. "There remain many unanswered questions about the development and execution of the Trump Administration's family separation or 'zero-tolerance' policy," Nadler wrote. He noted that the letter was written “in response to the latest tragic deaths in U.S. custody of young migrant children and the Trump Administration’s continued refusal to rule out reinstituting the family separation policy.”*****************************************************January 17, 2019Thousands more immigrant children were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy than was previously reported, it is disclosed in a report released by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services.According to a department press release, “Public attention has focused largely on children separated from their parents who are covered by a widely reported Federal court order [by Judge Dana M. Sabraw]. But, more children, over a longer period of time, have been separated from their parents or guardians and referred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for care,” according to the inspector general’s report.“As of December 2018, HHS had identified 2,737 children who were separated from their parents and required to be reunified by a June 2018 court,” the press release indicated. “However, this number does not represent the full scope of family separations. Thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court.”Whether these children had been reunified was unknown, the report stated:HHS has reunited most of the families on the certified list, pursuant to the court order; however, the lack of an existing, integrated data system to track separated families across HHS and DHS and the complexity of determining which children should be considered separated meant that the list of families entitled to reunification was still being revised as late as December 2018, more than 5 months after the order's effective date.In addition, HHS officials estimate that ORR received and released thousands of separated children before the court order. ORR was not legally required to identify or track separated children released before the court's order. Because of the limitation of its data systems, ORR was unable to provide a more precise estimate or specific information about these children's sponsor placements. Because they did not have parents covered by the June 26 order, these separated children were not included in the [court mandated] reunification process.* * *A secret memo, “Policy Options to Respond to Border Surge of Illegal Immigration, leaked by a whistleblower, is obtained by NBC News. The memo, which was revealed by U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley, was drafted by senior Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice officials in December 2017. It detailed deliberate plans to implement a family separation policy as a deterrent to would-be asylum seekers and laid out strategies to increase detention of migrant children.“This document shows Trump Administration staffers plotting to create a humanitarian crisis at the border--criminalizing the search for asylum, tearing children from their parents’ arms, and expanding the lock-up of both parents and children,” Merkley said in a press release. “[It] shows that the administration was treating children as political pawns, not vulnerable human beings. That’s reprehensible. We must end this Trump war on migrant children.”“Tonight’s newly-exposed document explicitly reveals that high-level administration officials lied at key points about how and why the Trump Administration created this crisis,” the press release stated.The Merkley press release listed five false claims made by the administration.1: False Claim: There is no child separation policyAdministration claim: DHS Secretary Nielsen “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” (June 17, 2018).Under Oath, on December 20, 2018 before the House Judiciary Committee, Nielsen stated again: “I'm not a liar; we've never had a policy for family separation.”Policy Options Memo: This document shows that as early as December 2017, the administration was actively developing and implementing a policy of family separation.2: False Claim: Family Separation is an Obama-era policyAdministration claim: DHS Secretary Nielsen “For those seeking asylum at ports of entry, we have continued the policy from previous administrations and will only separate if the child is in danger, there is no custodial relationship between 'family' members, or if the adult has broken a law.” (June 17, 2018)Policy Options Memo: This document makes clear that the administration knew they were implementing new policy that would likely face a legal challenge, not merely continuing existing policy. For example, in reference to the new family separation policy, the author of the document says:3: False Claim: Family separation was not implemented as a deterrentAdministration claim: DHS Secretary Nielsen was asked if the family separation policy was being used as a deterrent, and she replied: "I find that offensive." (June 18, 2018)Policy Options Memo: This memo repeatedly emphasizes that the goal of family separation was deterrence.4: False Claim: Unmanageable influxes of violent criminals are forcing the administration to expand detention facilitiesAdministration claim: President Trump “My administration has presented Congress with a detailed proposal to secure the border and stop the criminal gangs, drug smugglers, and human traffickers…We have requested more agents, immigration judges, and bed space” (January 8, 2019)Policy Options Memo: This document barely mentions violent gangs and drugs, instead focusing on prosecuting and deterring asylum seekers. To criminalize asylum, the memo recommends accusing parents of smuggling their own children across the border.*****************************************************February 1, 2019In court documents filed on February 1, Trump administration officials do not dispute (thereby in effect confirming) a recent Office of Inspector General report (see above, October 2, 2018) in which it was stated that there may have been thousands more children separated from parents under the administration’s family separation policy than had hitherto been acknowledged. The officials argued in the filings that it would take too long to figure out where those children currently are because the government had no tracking system.U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw had ordered the administration to respond to the inspector general’s report as part of an ongoing family separation lawsuit by February 1.Declarations from two officials -- Jallyn N. Sualog, deputy director for Children's Programs for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), and Jonathan White, commander with the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps -- were filed by the government. White was the Health and Human Services agency’s lead in the Unaccompanied Alien Children Reunification Coordination Group.In the filings, Sualog, who was involved in reunification efforts, and White detailed what HHS did to identify children who had been separated and to reunify them, as ordered by the court. White conceded, as the HHS inspector general report had shown, that "the effort was challenging because the data that were available for use in identifying possible children of class members were kept by multiple government agencies in different systems.""The ORR portal was not originally designed for aggregated tracking of separated children in ORR care," he wrote.White stated that removing children from "sponsor" homes to rejoin their parents "would present grave child welfare concerns." He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.Sualog stated that it would take up to eight hours to review each of its 47,083 cases of children separated from parents between July 1, 2017, and Judge Sabraw's June 26, 2018 order, which translated to 100 employees working up to 471 days and that such an assignment would "substantially imperil" operations without a "rapid, dramatic expansion" in staffing. He said that the government would lack legal authority to take children from their sponsors and "doing so would be so disruptive and harmful to the child."The ACLU’s Lee Gelernt, lead attorney in the lawsuit, stated: The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents, and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them. The administration also doesn’t dispute that separations are ongoing in significant numbers.”*****************************************************February 7, 2019Commander Jonathan White, an official in the Department of Health and Human Services leading efforts to reunite migrant children with their families, testifies at a hearing of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.White said that the Department of Homeland Security refused to heed his warnings about the problems and consequences of separating migrant children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border. "I do not believe that separation of children is in the best interests of the child," he said. “Neither I nor any career person [in the Office of Refugee Resettlement] would ever have supported such a policy proposal."White testified that he first heard of the possibility of family separations at a meeting in February 2017. He said he sought to raise concerns over the harm that it could cause children.“On the occasions that I raised it, I was advised that there was no policy that would result in the separation of children and parents, and that remained the answer that I received during my entire tenure until I left [the Office of Refugee Resettlement],” White, who was now in another office within HHS, said. He said he had no personal knowledge of anyone at the HHS "being advised of zero tolerance policy prior to its public announcement."Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declined to testify before the committee.*****************************************************February 21, 2019Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the United States District Court for the Southern District of California indicates that he is considering a request by the American Civil Liberties Union to hold the government accountable for the separation of potentially thousands more children after a watchdog report revealed the government's policy was implemented as far back as July 2017.Judge Sabraw, who ordered the Trump administration to end to the family separation policy on June 26, 2018, and reunify 2,700 children being held in government custody at the time, said that date is now arbitrary in light of the inspector general's report that found the family separation policy started as a pilot program in El Paso in 2017.The judge said the public has the right to know what the government did and the scope of it. He asked why wouldn't the case "include everyone who has been allegedly unlawfully separated? Why would it be tethered to an arbitrary date of June 26, 2018?" He said there may be thousands more parents and children who were separated."We simply don't know," Sabraw said. "There was no tracking. That's the harsh reality."Department of Justice attorney Scott Stewart objected, saying it would be a "significant burden" on the government to add the other families and "blow the case into some other galaxy" after the administration has "done all things to correct the wrong."The judge said he would issue a ruling soon.“I was shocked to hear that there were thousands who were separated,” American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Lee Gelernt the judge. He said there was a risk of the children being “permanently orphaned.”*****************************************************February 26, 2019At House Judiciary Committee hearings, Democratic representatives question Trump administration officials over the implementation of the family separation policy.Facing angry questions from Democrats, the officials who formulated and carried out the family separation policy acknowledged that they did not speak up to supervisors or attempt to stop the implementation of the family separations at the border, despite warnings it probably would traumatize children. They acknowledged communication failures among their agencies, but defended their actions as an attempt to uphold immigration laws.Democrat representatives on the committee blasted the separations as immoral and “un-American,” Representative. Ted Deutch said the administration had left children vulnerable to sexual abuse while they were held in shelters, pointing to dozens of alleged assaults by staff members during the past two years.“We share concern that I think everyone in this room feels,” said Jonathan White, Commander, United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), who was in charge of the reunification of families effort. He said that “the vast majority of allegations prove to be unfounded when they are investigated by state law enforcement and federal law enforcement and the state licensure authorities to whom we refer them.”The Democratic representatives demanded to know whether Trump officials raised objections to the separation plan. White said he told HHS officials in spring 2017 that the policy would traumatize children and potentially inflict long-term harm, warning others, including Scott Lloyd, then-director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS agency in charge of caring for separated children.Lloyd, a political appointee, was present at the hearing. “Mumbling at times through responses” (news story, The Washington Post), he acknowledged that he did not act on White’s warnings.“Did you ever say to the administration: ‘This is a bad idea?’ ” Rep. Pramila Jayapal asked. “Here’s what my child welfare experts have told us: ‘We need to stop this policy.’ Did you once say this to anybody above you?”“I did not say those words,” Lloyd answered.The officials who testified denied accusations that they were unprepared or had no system in place for family reunification.Carla Provost, chief of U.S. Border Patrol, said there was no automatic way to search Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) and Health and Human Services databases, meaning officials had to manually go through records to match parents with their children. Provost said the system had since been updated to include this function. However, she would not admit that CBP was unprepared to track family separation and disputed a January report from the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services saying there was never “an existing, integrated data system to track separated families.”Commander White had testified at a previous hearing of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. that he had raised the issue of the health effects on children with Lloyd and other political appointees in early 2017, more than a year before the Trump administration formally announced the separation policy. Under intense questioning from Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Lloyd said he never conveyed those concerns to anyone else.“Lloyd struggled to explain when -- or if -- he raised concerns about tracking thousands of children who had been separated at the border,” POLITICO’s Dan Diamond reported. An internal HHS audit in January 2019 had concluded that the Trump administration lacked an integrated system to track the families until after a federal judge in June 2018 ordered the reunifications.Lloyd disputed a claim, first reported by POLITICO, that he directed staff to stop keeping an informal spreadsheet tracking separated families before the administration had formally announced the "zero tolerance" border policy.*****************************************************February 28, 2019Immigration groups release an emailed letter expressing “grave concerns” about infants held in ICE detention facilities. The letter was addressed to Cameron Quinn, Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties U.S. Department of Homeland Security Washington and John V. Kelly Acting Inspector General U.S. Department of Homeland Security.Excerpts from the letter:Dear Ms. Quinn and M. Kelly: We write to bring your attention to an alarming increase in the number of infants being held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. As of today, there are at least nine infants under one year of age detained in the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley, Texas, at least one of whom has been detained for more than 20 days.We write to demand the simultaneous release of these infants and their mothers as authorized by … regulations. … ICE is required to meet basic standards of care for minor non-citizens in its custody.It repeatedly has demonstrated an inability to do so. We have grave concerns about the lack of specialized medical care available in Dilley for this vulnerable population. …Concerns include lengthy delays in receiving medical attention and lack of appropriate follow-up treatment. …Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has … advocated against the detention of children, including infants, in immigration detention centers. … The Department of Homeland Security’s medical and psychiatric experts have extensively documented the significant threats of harm to children from detention, after visits to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement family detention centers.”Additionally, even in healthy children, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends regularly scheduled well-child visits in the first year of a child’s life.Infants are especially vulnerable to serious illnesses, pain, disability, and even death from preventable infections and diseases. ….Some of the mothers report that their babies have lost weight since arriving at the detention center. Other mothers report that their infants are sick or have exhibited behavioral and sleep challenges during their detention in the STFRC. We urge your office to intervene immediately on behalf of this uniquely vulnerable population to demand the release of these families from custody to permit them to continue fighting their cases outside of detention.*****************************************************March 1, 2019Business Insider’s Michelle Mark reports that detention facilities for immigrant families are currently holding 18 infants under the age of 1, according to a statement by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) obtained by Business Insider.Seventeen of the babies were being held in the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, and one was being held in the Karnes County Residential Center.*****************************************************March 2-3, 2019Twenty-nine parents from across Central America who were separated from their children by U.S. immigration agents in 2018 cross the U.S. border, demanding asylum hearings that might allow them to reunite with their children.The group of parents had been traveling north during the preceding month. They had been deported without their children, who remained in the United States in shelters, in foster homes, or with relatives. The parents were assisted by a team of immigration lawyers who had devised a plan to reunify families divided by the Trump administration’s family separation policy.The group of parents walked toward the border, flanked by local religious officials, and then waited at the entrance to the United States as the lawyers negotiated with U.S. officials, who decided how many of the parents to allow into the country.Sandra Cordero, director of Families Belong Together, said that when the parents presented themselves for asylum at a port of entry in Mexicali, Mexico, U.S. Customs and Border Protection told them it had reached capacity and could not allow them to enter the U.S."The CBP says they're at capacity," she said. "But they're not giving us information on what that capacity is. We're staying."Late in the day, Customs and Border Protection began processing the parents' asylum claims, five at a time. “The process could mean detention and more delays in possible reunions with their children,’ NBC news reported.After 12 hours of tense deliberation, the parents were allowed to cross the border, on a pedestrian bridge from Mexicali, Mexico into Calexico, California, where they were met by agents from U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP).*****************************************************March 4, 2019Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers announce that they have released 12 of the infants that were being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas. Pro-immigrant advocates had noted complaints of dirty water, limited baby food, and a lack of medical care.In an email, ICE said there were 16 infants younger than a year old held at the Dilley residential center as of March 1. The status of the remaining four babies was unclear. ICE also said there was another infant under the age of 1 detained at the Karnes County Residential Center in Karnes City, Texas.Mothers and infants were released together to friends and family members. "Every mother I spoke to said that her child was sick in some way. It’s just really hard seeing all of these very small babies in a detention setting," Katy Murdza, the advocacy coordinator at the American Immigration Council's Dilley Pro Bono Project. told CBS News.*****************************************************March 6, 2019Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testifies at a contentious House Homeland Security Committee hearing. Nielsen “tersely defended a now-defunct Trump administration practice of separating migrant children from their families at the border, sidestepping whether she supported it as a way to deter illegal immigration” (The New York Times).Nielsen implored Congress to confront what she called a “humanitarian catastrophe” on the southern border by changing laws to crack down on illegal border crossings. She also said the Trump administration’s family separation practice was similar to those of previous presidents -- even if only sporadically enforced in earlier cases.“It was a policy by this administration that only ended when there were pictures of little kids in cages that had been ripped away from their parents,” Representative Kathleen Rice said.Nielsen replied that Rice had mischaracterized the administration’s enforcement.“That’s a policy,” Rice said. “You should admit it.”Democrats criticized Nielsen for not adequately keeping track of migrant children who were separated from their parents in 2018. She said she didn't know how many children are in Customs and Border Protection custody.“You let kids be separated without tracking them. Do you know how outrageous that is, Madam Secretary?” said Representative Nanette Barragán, Democrat of California. “You have no feeling, no compassion, no empathy here.”Nielsen did not respond.Nielsen said that family separation wasn't intended to be a deterrent despite a leaked internal memo, drafted by senior Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice officials in December 2017, which detailed deliberate plans to implement a family separation policy as a deterrent to would-be asylum seekers. In a section headed "short term (next 30 days) options," the memo said: "Separate Family Units. Announce that DHS is considering separating family units, placing the adults in adult detention and placing the minors under the age of 18 in the custody of HHS as unaccompanied alien children,"Nielsen and Representative Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, sparred over whether children are kept in "cages" at border patrol facilities. The exchange prompted Nielsen to use her hands to show what a cage would look like:Thompson: For the record, are we still using cages for children?Nielsen: Sir, we don't use cages for children. In the border facilities, that you have been to, they were not made to detain children. As the children are processed through, they are in sub-parts of those facilities. … I'm being as clear as I can, sir. Respectfully I'm trying to answer your question.Thompson: Just yes or now, are we still putting children in cages?Nielsen: To my knowledge, CBP never purposefully put a child in cage, if you mean a cage like this? [Uses hands to show a cage]Thompson: Purposefully or whatever, are we putting children in cages as of today?Nielsen: Children are processed at the border facility stations that you have been at ...Thompson: And I've seen the cages. I just want you to admit that the cages exist.Nielsen: Sir, they're not cagesThompson: What are they?Nielsen: They are areas of the border facility that are carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they are being processed. If we have two gangs, we separate them into separate areas of that facilities.Thompson: No, no, madam secretary.Nielsen: If we have a father and daughter, we separate (them) from another son.Thompson: ... we are not going to go through the semantics. Now I saw the cyclone fences that were made as cages. And you did too. All you have to do is admit it. If it's a bad policy, then change it, but don't mislead the committee.Nielsen: Sir --Thompson: Do not mislead the committee.Representative Al Green accused the Trump administration of preventing people of color from coming to the U.S.. “White babies would not be treated the way these babies of color are being treated, madam secretary," he told Nielsen."This is about color,” Green said. “We’ve opened our doors, your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. Except we now have our quota of people of color."* * *From the Daily News (New York):Hundreds of migrant parents were deported from the U.S. without first being offered the opportunity to reunify with their children, the Trump administration acknowledged Wednesday [March 6] -- just hours after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen testified to the contrary.As part of a status update in an ongoing lawsuit, the administration said it had identified 471 adult migrants who were removed from the country without being given the option to “elect or waive reunification” because of its since-defunct “zero tolerance” policy.The administration's latest tally was disclosed in response to a request from the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the legal challenge that prompted a federal California judge to order last summer that the government had to reunify the thousands of migrant children who were separated from their loved ones because of “zero tolerance.”In testimony on March 6 before the House Homeland Security Committee., Nielsen had said: “There was no parent who has been deported to my knowledge without multiple opportunities to take their children with them,”*****************************************************March 8, 2019From VOA News (Voice of America):A federal judge who ordered that more than 2,700 children be reunited with their parents expanded his authority Friday [March 8] to potentially thousands more children who were separated at the border earlier during the Trump administration.[Judge] Dana M. Sabraw ruled that his authority applies to any parents who were separated at the border on or after July 1, 2017. Previously his order applied only to parents whose children were in custody on June 26, 2018.“The ruling dramatically expands the scope of the class-action lawsuit that compelled the Trump administration to reunite the separated families.” the Washington Post reported.Judge Sabraw was responding to a report in January by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s internal watchdog that said thousands more children may have been separated since the summer of 2017. The department’s inspector general said the precise number was unknown.In response to an earlier request by the American Civil Liberties Union that the government be held accountable for the separation of potentially thousands more children than those earlier disclosed to have been held in custody, Justice Department attorney Scott Stewart had told the judge in February that it would be a “significant burden” to add families [to those deemed eligible for reunification] and would “blow the case into some other galaxy” after the administration had “done all things to correct the wrong.”Judge Sabraw, in his order, wrote: “The hallmark of a civilized society is measured by how it treats its people and those within its borders,” he wrote. “That defendants may have to change course and undertake additional effort to address these issues does not render modification of the class definition unfair; it only serves to underscore the unquestionable importance of the effort and why it is necessary (and worthwhile).”The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued over the practice of splitting families, welcomed the decision. “The court made clear that potentially thousands of children’s lives are at stake and that the Trump administration cannot simply ignore the devastation it has caused,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said.*****************************************************March 13, 2019Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar is questioned at a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education hearing.In her opening statement, the committee chairwoman, Representative Rosa DeLauro, suggested that the separation of families at the U.S./Mexico border may have started roughly a year before the policy was publicly announced, as reported by the Office of the Inspector General in January, and that thousands more children may have been separated than previously realized. "We have to understand how this happened, why it happened, who is responsible? Is it happening now? ... How do we stop this?" DeLauro said.DeLauro asked Azar when he personally learned that the Department of Homeland Security was implementing a policy of family separation."I learned, when others did, in April when the Attorney General announced that he was going to pursue zero tolerance ... and then when the Attorney General announced on May 7 that he was implementing zero tolerance and the 100% referral policy, around that time, I would have been aware of those. But in all candor ... I did not connect the dots, at that point, to the full implications and operational challenges ... in terms of children for our program," Azar said.DeLauro also asked Azar when he learned that Commnader Jonathan White, a career Public Health Service officer, had warned other members of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that "capacity issues would become a problem if DHS moved forward with family separation." DeLauro noted that White expressed concern to leadership at ORR as early as March 2017 of what appeared to be a looming crisis.Azar answered that he had learned of the conversations "about when you did ... essentially when they would have come out in the course of testimony."Azar stressed that HHS was "on the receiving end [of the problem]; we didn't decide the policy.""DHS was separating children long before they announced it as a form of policy. If senior officials at HHS didn't push back on Homeland Security, despite warnings from ORR career officials, then they were complicit in what was an illegal, immoral family separation. It is your job to hold these people accountable, and it is my job, it's our job, to hold you accountable," DeLauro said.Asked whether HHS was now "pushing back" on DHS in cases where children are referred to the agency without providing a reason for being separated, Azar said the agency was requesting "enhanced information from DHS."Azar was asked by Representative Barbara Lee whether, in his role as head of a health agency, he had raised "red flags" about the potential trauma to children.“There's no dispute between us that children being away from their parents is a bad thing, that it imposes mental health issues,” Azar responded. “That's why we encouraged people 'Do not come across the border illegally at non-border crossings, because you're going to be arrested.' "*****************************************************April 5, 2019In a court filing, Justice Department lawyers say that it will take at least a year to review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children taken into government custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018 -- the day before U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw halted the general practice of splitting families. The judge had ruled in March that he could hold the government accountable for families that were separated before his June 2019 order and had asked the government submit a proposal for the next steps.The administration said that it would provide information on separated families on a rolling basis to the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued to reunite families.The ACLU criticized the proposed timeline. “We strongly oppose a plan that could take up to two years to locate these families,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney. “The government needs to make this a priority.”*****************************************************April 7, 2019Kirstjen Nielsen resigns as homeland security secretary.Kevin McAleenan, the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, is appointed by President Trump to replace Nielsen on an acting basis.“As the nation’s top border enforcement officer, Mr. McAleenan also helped carry out the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy to prosecute parents caught crossing the border illegally, which led to family separations. That policy was reversed, but the effects remain.” The New York Times reported.*****************************************************April 8, 2019NBC news reporters Julia Ainsley and Geoff Bennett report that President Donald Trump has “for months” been urging that the administration reinstate large-scale separation of migrant families crossing the border, according to unnamed sources. They report that Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resisted, setting her at odds with the president and leading to her resignation.*****************************************************April 9, 2019“President Obama had child separation. Take a look. The press knows it, you know it, we all know it. I didn’t have -- I’m the one that stopped it. President Obama had child separation. … President Obama separated children. They had child separation. I was the one that changed it, okay?”-- President Trump, in remarks at the Oval Office, April 9, 2019The Washington Post:President Trump denied Tuesday that his administration is preparing to once more separate migrant families in response to the surge in border crossings, telling reporters that he had ordered an end to a policy established under President Obama.“I’m the one who stopped it,” Trump said. “President Obama had child separation.”Trump also told reporters at the Oval Office that he did not approve of the Border Patrol holding pens with chain-link partitions widely derided as “cages,” and whose images exacerbated a backlash against the White House last spring at the height of its “zero tolerance” prosecution push.“Those cages that were shown -- I think they were very inappropriate -- were by President Obama’s administration, not by Trump,” the president said.Associated Press reporters Calvin Woodward and Nomaan Merchant showed that Trump’s claims were false. “In fact.” they wrote, Trump “stopped -- or at least suspended -- family separations that spiked as a result of his own ‘zero-tolerance’ policy.”*****************************************************April 15-16, 2019Attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union say in a federal court filing on April 15 that the Trump administration's one- to two-year timetable for reuniting potentially thousands of separated migrant families shows "a callous disregard for these families and should be rejected."U.S. District Court judge Dana M. Sabraw says in a court hearing on April 16 that it appears the Trump administration can identify potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the border in less time than the one to two years it wanted.Judge Sabraw said that he was reluctant to impose deadlines and asked lawyers for the administration and American Civil Liberties Union try to reach a mutual agreement.*****************************************************April 25, 2019Judge Sabraw imposes a six-month deadline on the Trump administration to identify potentially thousands more children it separated from parents. The government had originally proposed up to two years.“The [judge’s] order shows that the court continues to recognize the gravity of this situation,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that resulted in the reunification of nearly 2,800 families that were separated in 2018. “The court once again made clear that it was not prepared to put up with any delays, and that these families must be found.”*****************************************************April 28, 2019In an interview with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo, President Trump says that his ending the practice of separating children from their families at border crossings has been “a disaster” that has resulted in a surge of people coming into the country illegally.Trump said the practice of family separation had served as an effective “disincentive” for people who wish to enter the country illegally.“Now you don’t get separated, and while that sounds nice and all, what happens is you have literally you have ten times as many families coming up because they’re not going to be separated from their children,” Trump said. “It’s a disaster.”The Washington Post notes that Trump “overstated the increase [of illegal immigrants] as measured by the government.”“When they used to separate children, which was done during the Obama administration, with Bush, with us, with everybody, far fewer people would come,” Trump said. “And we’ve been on a humane basis, it was pretty bad -- we go out and we stop the separations. The problem is you have ten times as many people coming up with their families. It’s like Disneyland now.”“The practice of separating children from their parents was done on a far more limited basis under previous administrations. In most instances, children were separated when federal officials had concerns about their safety while in their parents’ care,” The Washington Post notes.*****************************************************May 1, 2019Hitherto undisclosed emails obtained by NBC News, dated June 23, 2018 (days after President Donald Trump officially ended his administration's "zero tolerance policy," which separated migrant families at the U.S. border with Mexico), indicate that the government only had enough information then to a handful of parents with their children.President Donald Trump ended his separation policy by executive order on June 20, 2018. Three days later, the Department of Homeland Security issued a fact sheet proclaiming the "United States government knows the location of all children in its custody and is working to reunite them with their families."The emails showed that officials did not have an effective database to reunite families. "[I]n short, no, we do not have any linkages from parents to [children], save for a handful," a Health and Human Services official told a top official at Immigration and Customs Enforcement on June 23, 2018. "We have a list of parent alien numbers but no way to link them to children."The gaps in the system for tracking separations resulted in a months-long effort by the government to reunite nearly 3,000 families separated under the zero tolerance policy. Officials had to review all the relevant records manually, a process that was continuing as of the date of the NBC News report.Lee Gelernt, lead lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union in a family separations case, said, “It is now clear beyond doubt that the government never had a proper tracking system but unfortunately they pretended in the beginning that they did.”*****************************************************May 14, 2019A then unidentified 2 ?- year-old Guatemalan boy, Wilmer Josué Ramírez, who had been taken into custody by U.S. Border Patrol agents dies at Providence Children's Hospital in El Paso, Texas.The boy and his family were taken into custody April 3 by agents near the Paso Del Norte International Bridge. Three days later, the boy’s mother told agents that her son was sick, the official said. While the boy was in the hospital, he and family were dismissed from Border Patrol custody on their own recognizance, the official said. The family was issued a notice to appear in immigration court. When the boy died, he was no longer in Border Patrol custody.Tekandi Paniagua, the consul for Guatemala in Del Rio, Texas, said that the boy had a high fever and difficulty breathing. He was diagnosed with pneumonia at Providence Children's Hospital in El Paso. He remained hospitalized for about a month before dying.*****************************************************May 17, 2019In a court hearing, it is disclosed that at least 1,712 additional migrant children may have been separated from their parents by the government -- in addition to those children separated under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy -- before the policy took effect. The hearing was held before U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw. The judge had ordered the administration to identify children separated before the zero tolerance policy went into effect in May 2018, resulting in the separation of over 2,800 children. Sabraw had previously ordered those migrant families to be reunited, but the additional children were identified more recently by the Inspector General for Health and Human Services.NBC News reported: “Other potentially separated migrant children could still be identified. The government has reviewed the files of 4,108 children out of 50,000 so far.”*****************************************************May 21-22, 2019U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, U.S. Representative Jesús García and U.S. Representative Lauren Underwood (D-Naperville) separately denounce the government’s role in the deaths of six migrant children who died in U.S. custody over the preceding eight months.Durbin, along with 24 Senators, called on the International Committee of the Red Cross and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security acting inspector general to investigate DHS Customs and Border Protection detention facilities at the southwest border. “The ICRC has played a critical role in ensuring that migrant detention facilities around the world comply with international human rights standards,” the letter stated. “We ask that you immediately launch an investigation into CBP’s facilities for detained migrants on the U.S. southwest border.”García, along with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, held a press conference to condemn the government’s actions and call for an independent investigation. The caucus also announced its intentions to introduce legislation that would require all detained migrants receive basic necessities such as medical care and shelter.García called the conditions of the facilities “unacceptable and inhumane.” He added the immigration and detention system is broken and said the Trump administration is making no “visible” progress to address the issue.“This deadly treatment of migrants is un-American,” García said. “We cannot allow the Trump Administration to dismiss these deaths as the new normal. This is an intentional strategy that Attorney General Sessions introduced, explaining he wanted the family separation policy to serve as a deterrent to other immigrants considering crossing the border.”*****************************************************May 22, 2019Kevin McAleenan, who had been appointed United States Secretary of Homeland Security in April (replacing Kirstjen Nielsen, who had resigned), testifies at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing. He said that unless Congress approved more funding to deal with an unprecedented influx of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, it would be difficult for DHS officials to prevent more deaths of migrant children in U.S. custody.McAleenan was interrupted by Representative Lauren Underwood. "But people keep dying, sir," she said. "So obviously this is more than a question of resources.""At this point, with five kids that have died, 5,000 separated from their families, I feel like -- and the evidence is really -- clear that this is intentional," Underwood told McAleenan. "It's a policy choice being made on purpose by this administration -- and it's cruel and inhumane."McAleenan responded by calling that an "appalling accusation."After a recess, Republicans on the committee were able to push through a vote to admonish Underwood. Her statement was stricken from the official hearing record, and she was barred from talking during the rest of the session.* * *A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Mark Weber, discloses in a statement to CBS News that an unnamed 10-year-old girl from El Salvador died in HHS custody on September 29, 2018. The child's death had not been previously reported.She was the first of six migrant children to die in U.S. custody -- or soon after being released -- in the eight months preceding the disclosure.Manuel Castillo, Consulate General of El Salvador in Aurora, told CBS News that his office had no knowledge of the girl's death. Castillo said the office was caught off guard by the news, and was hoping CBS News report would help him track down the family.In an interview with CBS News, Representative Joaquin Castro accused the administration of concealing the girl's death. "I have not seen any indication that the Trump administration disclosed the death of this young girl to the public or even to Congress," Castro said. "And if that's the case, they covered up her death for eight months, even though we were actively asking the question about whether any child had died or been seriously injured. We began asking that question last fall."*****************************************************June 14, 2019Border patrol officials in the city of Deming, New Mexico are accused of separating migrant parents from their children, despite the supposed ending of a policy by the Trump administration). According to a report from KFOX14, El Paso:A spokesperson with the city of Deming, New Mexico, is accusing the Border Patrol of separating migrants from their children.Officials with Border Patrol said there is a good reason for some of those separations.The city said that since it began receiving migrants from Border Patrol in April, at least six families have arrived at the shelter from El Paso without the children they crossed into the country with.In each of those cases, the parents said that while being processed, they were instructed by Customs and Border Protection to go in one direction and their children in another. The case includes children as young as 6 years old.Customs and Border Protection said the only reason separations like these would happen is if they determined the children didn’t belong to the families in question.But Deming officials said the pain felt by migrants who don’t know where their children are is very real.“These people arrive here very distraught, and as a parent, as a grandparent, all I can do is believe them,” said [former Deming Schools’ Assistant Superintendent] Ray Trejo.CBP asked for the documentation of each migrant alleging child separation so that they can check what would have caused children to be directed away from their families at the ports of entry.*****************************************************June 17, 2019President Trump is interviewed by Time magazine. Excerpts follow:TIME: Would you consider reinstating the family separation policy?TRUMP: So let me tell you about that. It’s very interesting. President Obama had separation. I’m the one that brought it together. I was the one, and what that did is it made more people come up because I didn’t like separation any more than you did. But if you look at those cells, where they were showing all these cells, they looked like jail cells or cyclone fence -- but they look like jail cells. They were built in 2014 by Obama. I think you people had one of those pictures actually. You said look at these cells. It turned out they were built by Obama. They were built by people that I know very well. People that want to come into the Administration. But if you look at the separation policy, I had that policy, and then I’m the one that put the families back together. When you put the families back together, you have more families come up. It’s a very simple …TIME: On your watch, sir --TRUMP: No, but you understand what I’m saying.TIME: Yeah, there were --TRUMP: I inherited separation.TIME: On your watch, there were families whose parents were separated from the children. They were deported. The children were left behind. And the agencies --TRUMP: Well, they had that under Obama’s watch, too.TIME: And the agencies didn’t keep good records, and have had a hard time reuniting --TRUMP: Many of those records were Obama records, and they had separation and they had the exact same thing during the Obama years. The difference is because our economy is so strong, more people came up. Plus, they learned how weak our laws are. Now the laws, hopefully, are going to be changed. But they learned how weak the laws are. But you know, if Mexico does the job, they have very strong policy; they have very strong immigration policy. If Mexico does the job, there should be very few people coming up through Mexico. And Mexico can do the job. And I believe they will do the job, but if they don’t do the job, we’re going to put tariffs on, and they understand that, and the tariffs are very significant.TIME: What other measures are you considering if the numbers continue to grow?TRUMP: I don’t think they will continue to grow. I think they’re starting to go down now.TIME: Do you know how many [immigrant] kids were separated from their parents under your -- Administration. Do you have a number?TRUMP: Well, they have lists. They have very accurate lists actually. But you have to understand, they were separated with President Obama. They were separated with President Bush. I didn’t change the policy, and the policy had been changed, it was -- I’m the one that ended separation. Just so we understand. And when we ended separation, and I was not surprised to see this, more families came up because now they’re not going to be separated.TIME: So would you consider reinstating [the policy]?TRUMP: I don’t know, I don’t like it, I don’t like the concept of separation. I’d rather keep them from coming up, it would be a lot easier because I don’t like it. But I’m -- it’s crazy. I got such a bad rap on that. I inherited separation.TIME: But it was the enforcement --TRUMP: These were the laws, President Bush had them, President Obama had them. I had them. And when I had them, everybody went wild about separation, nobody talked about separation before. But Obama, President Obama is the one that built the jail cells, as they called them, and they said “Look at these cells, isn’t this terrible?” I said, wait a minute -- and we didn’t know that, and then they stepped forward -- those pictures were perhaps in your magazine in 2014. That was long before I became President.All of those cells were built in 2014, and before. And they made it sound like I did it. Look, just so we understand, separation has been there for a long time. When I got there, I ended separation. I knew what would happen. More people would come up, but I didn’t like the concept of separation. It was bad. Now what we’re doing, if this works with Mexico, there will be a trem--. Look, they’re putting 6,000 soldiers on their southern border. That’s a game-changer.We are now bringing people back into Mexico.*****************************************************June 18, 2019A Justice Department lawyer, Sarah B. Fabian --appearing before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, in a case about how the federal is legally obligated to treat migrant children who are in custody -- argues that migrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border do not require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes in order to be in held in "safe and sanitary" conditions.“It’s within everybody’s common understanding that if you don’t have a toothbrush, if you don’t have soap, if you don’t have a blanket, that’s not ‘safe and sanitary,’” Judge A. Wallace Tashima of the Ninth Circuit said. ““Wouldn’t everybody agree to that? Do you agree with that?”“Well, I think it’s -- I think those are -- there’s fair reason to find that those things may be part of ‘safe and sanitary,’” Ms. Fabian replied.“Not ‘may be,’” the judge said. “‘Are’ a part. Why do you say, ‘may be’? You mean there’s circumstances when a person doesn’t need to have a toothbrush, toothpaste and soap for days?”“Well, I think, in C.B.P. [Customs and Border Protection] custody, it’s frequently intended to be much shorter term,” Ms. Fabian replied. “So it may be that for a shorter-term stay in C.B.P. custody that some of those things may not be required.”“Ms. Fabian stopped short of directly stating that the government did not have to provide toothbrushes, soap and beds to migrant children,” The New York Times later reported. “But her attempts to dance around the subject, and her apparent inability to clarify for the judges just what she was arguing, helped turn Ms. Fabian into the public face of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children at the border.”Fabian also argued that requiring minors to sleep on cold concrete floors in crowded cells with low temperatures fulfilled that requirements of the Flores Settlement, which set standards for the treatment of migrant children in dentition.“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement [the Flores Settlement] as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” U.S. Circuit Judge William Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”*****************************************************June 19, 2019A legal team visits a Customs and Border Protection facility in Clint, Texas and interviews sixty children at the facility. The team reports dire conditions. Their findings will become public (beginning with a report by the Associated Press) a few days later and cause outrage.Conditions reported on included lack of adequate food, water, and sanitation; no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap; children being fed uncooked frozen food or rice, children going weeks without bathing or a clean change of clothes; and three girls, ages 10 to 15, taking turns keeping watching over a sick 2-year-old boy.Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to the allegations about the conditions, but had said in recent weeks that it was overwhelmed and needed more money and help from a gridlocked Congress.*****************************************************June 20, 2019In an interview with the Spanish-language television network Telemundo, President Trump blames former President Barack Obama for migrant family separations. The interview centered around the Trump administration's zero tolerance policy in spring 2018 that led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents.Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart mentioned the shoddy conditions in which migrant children had been detained, which included large chain-link cages in certain Border Patrol processing facilities. He noted that many immigrants and Hispanic-Americans want the Trump administration to crack down on certain areas of the immigration system -- mainly when it comes to deporting MS-13 gang members -- but that they're not in favor of harsh treatment towards migrant children and families. "Those people are the first ones that want MS-13 removed, but they don't want to see families separated at the border, they don't want to see children in cages," Díaz-Balart said."Obama built the cages," Trump responded. "I didn't build them. Obama built them."Trump in the interview sought to blame Obama for the family separations. But, as Business Insider’s Michelle Mark noted, “the Obama administration did not have a policy around large-scale separation of migrant families. The thousands of children separated from their parents last year were separated entirely due to Trump policies.”*****************************************************June 23, 2019President Trump is interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He said that his administration is going a "fantastic job" with detained migrant children, given the "circumstances."Trump blamed Democrats when host Chuck Todd brought up the fact that the administration cut recreation and English classes at shelters for migrant kids."We're doing a fantastic job under the circumstances," Trump said. "The Democrats aren't even approving giving us money. Where is the money? You know what? The Democrats are holding up the humanitarian aid."When Todd suggested that the children were being used politically, Trump said: “"If the Democrats would change the asylum laws and the loopholes, which they refuse to do because they think it's good politics, everything would be solved immediately. But they refuse to do it. They refuse to do it. You know what? If they change those, I say, I used to say 45 minutes. It's 15 minutes. If they changed asylum and if they changed loopholes everything on the border would be perfect."When asked about family separations, Trump faulted former President Barack Obama."Separation, President Obama, I took over separation. I'm the one that put it together. What's happened though are the cartels and all of these bad people, they're using the kids," he said. "It's almost like slavery."* * *Vice President Mike Pence is interviewed on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” and on CNN's "State of the Union."Except from the “Face the Nation” interview:MARGARET BRENNAN: There have been details released over the past few days by lawyers who've gone down and looked describing, "Children sleeping on cold floors," "filthy," "lice outbreaks," "flu outbreaks," "not in any way safe and sanitary conditions." Is that acceptable, and what does the White House going to do since, as you say, Congress is doing nothing. What are you going to do?PENCE: Margaret, it's- it's totally unacceptable. But the American people deserve to know that our dedicated Customs and Border Patrol agents are literally being overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands of people coming across our border to take advantage of loopholes in our laws. But- but it's--MARGARET BRENNAN: So what are you going to do about it at the executive level?PENCE: When the president declared a national emergency earlier this year, we were asking Congress in January to give us more bed space. Democrats in Congress refused. Congress continues -- although Speaker Pelosi has indicated a willingness to look at -- at a bill that would provide more humanitarian assistance. Over the next two weeks, we're going to look to get those resources as well as close the loopholes. But look, we've -- we've asked for more bed space, we've asked for more support. Our Customs and Border Patrol agents are doing a- a job but the system is overwhelmed and --MARGARET BRENNAN: So how is the executive totally powerless to do anything about these unsafe, unsanitary conditions?PENCE: Well, we're doing a lot with what the Congress has given us. But again, Congress refused to increase the bed space in the last appropriations bill. They continue -- …MARGARET BRENNAN: --we just have to accept these conditions--PENCE: --on additional humanitarian support.MARGARET BRENNAN" -- that are being described here?PENCE: No, absolutely not. It's one of the reasons why the president's taken the strong stand that he's taken on the crisis on our southern border. …But ultimately, closing loopholes, getting our dedicated Customs and Border Patrol agents more resources to deal with this overwhelming humanitarian crisis, that's how we address the issue. And- and the president and I are going to continue to stand strong, call on the Congress to do their job. It- it's amazing to think that- that- that Mexico has done more to secure our southern border in the last ten days than Democrats in Congress have done in the last ten years. The American people deserve better. We're going to continue to demand … that Democrats in Congress step up.MARGARET BRENNAN: Well many would say that the people -- those children deserve better who are already in U.S. custody --PENCE: They do. … Let me- just can I say that. I was down at one of the detention centers. It is heartbreaking to see what you see, families that are in these detention centers. What we have--MARGARET BRENNAN: So, what can you do?PENCE: Exactly what we're doing. Human --MARGARET BRENNAN: You can't do anything more other than … blame it on the Democratic controlled House?VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: No. You can demand that the Congress do its job as the president is doing his job.MARGARET BRENNAN: Why isn't the president tweeting about it? He's tweeting about rounding people up he's not tweeting about babies without diapers and sleeping on cold floors-- …the details that are horrific.VICE PRESIDENT PENCE: Look part of the way that we stem this mass migration that's being driven by heartless human traffickers who are taking $5,000 dollars a person to entice vulnerable families to come north. …-- making clear that people will be deported. You know in 2015 when President Obama did a round of nationwide internal enforcement and deported people out of the country actually we saw illegal immigration at the southern border go down. What we have-- …we have to do to secure the border with a wall. We have to close the loopholes. Mexico has to implement the agreement that they've made. But Congress has got to step up. The president is going to continue demand they do.Interviewed on CNN' by Jake Tapper, Pence said that "of course" the Trump administration believes migrant children being held at detention facilities should have access to soap, toothbrushes and other basic amenities, comments that come just days after the administration went to court to argue against having to provide the children with such things."Of course we do," Pence told Tapper. "My point is it's all a part of the appropriations process. Congress needs to provide additional support to deal with the crisis at our southern border."Pence added that "we've got to get to the root causes" of migration, pointing to immigration "loopholes" before citing the administration's recent agreement with Mexico to curb the flow of migration.Pence was asked about a recent hearing before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco where a Justice Department lawyer would not confirm that migrant children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border require basic hygiene products like soap and toothbrushes.Pence said he could not "speak to what that lawyer was saying," adding that "one of the reasons" the administration sought more bed spaces in the facilities earlier this year was to improve conditions.When Tapper pointed out to Pence that the conditions at the facilities have led to health crises, Pence said, "No American should approve of this mass influx of people coming across our border" and called the scene at detention centers "heartbreaking."*****************************************************June 24, 2019POLITICO, June 24, 2019:Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar is interviewed on Fox News. Azar defended the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children at HHS border shelters and lamented the state of other facilities, saying that the centers run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were “not good conditions for kids to be in.”The CBP facilities were “built for single adults coming across back in the ’80s, ’90s and 2000s,” Azar said. “It is overwhelmed -- these are not good conditions for kids to be in.”Fox News host Harris Faulkner asked Azar to comment on comments by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in which she compared migrant detention centers to “concentration camps.” Azar responded by promoting the merits of the HHS centers, which were built to also house children.“They have three square meals a day. They get two snacks,” he said. “They are getting education services. They get recreation. We get funding from Congress. We are paying $220 to $1,200 a day per kid. They are in a good state, and a healthy environment.”*****************************************************June 28, 2019Judge Dolly M. Gee, a United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Central District of California issues a ruling ordering the Trump administration to take steps to improve the conditions for migrant children in detention, conditions which immigrant-rights attorneys had called unsanitary. A deadline of July 12 was set by the judge for the government to report on what it has accomplished “post haste” to remedy the conditions.In its story on the ruling. The New York Times noted that the lawyers in their suit focused on conditions at a Border Patrol facility in Clint, Texas. They said children were unable to bathe, were living in filthy clothes and diapers and were often hungry.*****************************************************July 2, 2019Demonstrators across the United States demand the closure of detention facilities holding migrant children and families. Crowds of protesters chanting, "Close the camps, now!" gathered outside the offices of various U.S. senators and representatives in cities such as New York, Chicago, and Indianapolis.* * *U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee orders lawyers representing detained migrants and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to quickly resolve a demand that health experts be allowed to examine children and inspect detention facilities. The order encompassed all facilities in the CBP's El Paso and Rio Grande Valley sectors, which were the subject of a lawsuit.Attorneys who were part of a team of doctors and advocates for the children had asked that the court force CBP to allow a public health expert to inspect the facilities and create a binding plan to ensure the centers are "safe and sanitary," and to permit medical experts to examine the detained children and address their medical needs.*****************************************************July 3, 2019The New York Times:President Trump said on Wednesday [July 3] that migrants were “living far better” in Border Patrol detention centers than in their home countries, one day after his own administration reported that children in some facilities were denied hot meals or showers, and that cells were so crowded that migrants begged to be freed.In a series of posts on Twitter, Mr. Trump criticized Democrats who this week visited Border Patrol facilities in Texas, and reported that migrants had been forced to drink from a toilet. Customs and Border Protection officials have disputed that claim.“Many of these illegal aliens are living far better now than where they came from, and in far safer conditions,” Mr. Trump said over multiple tweets. “No matter how good things actually look, even if perfect, the Democrat visitors will act shocked & aghast at how terrible things are.”*****************************************************July 5, 2019Appearing on CNN, Samantha Vinograd, a national security analyst for the cable network, notes (quoting a recent tweet) recent comments from UNICEF CEO Caryl Stern that “society is judged by how it treats its children.” “President Trump’s legacy,” she said, “is tolerating abuse against children.”“I have a very simple question for President Trump,” she said. “would he let his grandchildren go without a shower or a hot meal for days? That’s what [a] DHS report … claims is happening under President Trump’s care.”Vinograd said that “the president’s policy has led to an increase in migration from Central American countries” and that “his response has been to ignore the reality that is happening at these detention facilities. … It really begs the question of whether he considers these gruesome images, these inhumane conditions at these facilities, as a deterrent to migration, to try to scare people in not trying to come here.”*****************************************************July 7, 2019Interviewed on CBS News’ Face the Nation, U.S. Senator Chris Coons says the Trump administration “has intentionally used cruelty to children as a tool of immigration policy.”Coons said that the Trump administration was going out of its way to avoid a political solution.“I’ll remind you that their zero tolerance policy that forcibly separated children from their parents at the border a year ago was a humanitarian disaster and faced a bipartisan outcry of both Republicans and Democrats,” Coons told host Margaret Brennan. “So they don’t have a lot of moral authority to stand on in arguing that they’d like Congress to give them an unlimited ability to detain children and their parents at the border.”* * *In an interview on NBC News’s Meet the Press, U.S. Senator Jeff Merkley notes that many migrant detention centers for children are run by "for-profit" companies. Merkley said that the U.S. was currently establishing "the largest child prison in American history" to deal with immigrant children."This process of the brutalization of refugees, and particularly children, is part of a philosophy of saying, 'If we treat them like this, we'll discourage them from coming," Merkley said. "There's just no ethical framework or religious tradition that allows you to mistreat children in this fashion."*****************************************************July 11, 2019During a news conference at which she introduced the "Stop Cruelty to Migrant Children Act," U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono says: "When you saw the pictures of the kids at these detention facilities. When you saw the father, the little girl drowned in the Rio Grande. And if you didn't feel shame, pain. If you weren't appalled by these pictures, then something is dead or dying in your hearts and in the heart of America."*****************************************************July 12, 2019The House Oversight and Reform Committee holds a hearing and releases a report containing findings gleaned from records that the committee obtained under subpoena on migrant children who were separated from their families under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.The report, based on subpoenas issued in February to the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services, found:At least 18 infants and toddlers under two years old were taken away from their parents at the border and kept apart for 20 days to half a year. The youngest child was four months old.At least 241 separated children were kept in Border Patrol facilities longer than the 72-hour maximum allowed under federal law.At least 679 children were held for 46 to 75 days, more than 50 were held for six months to a year and more than 25 were held for more than a year.Even after being reunited with their parents, hundreds of separated children continued to be detained for months in family detention facilities – far longer than the 20-day limit under the Flores settlement.At least 30 children separated from their parents under the zero-tolerance policy remained separated"Officials from the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services testified at the hearing, during which the focus shifted from the report to the current treatment of migrants seeking asylum at the border.“Anyone in the custody of our government, especially a child, must be treated humanely and with respect,” Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee chairman, said. “Children should not be separated from their mothers or fathers unless there is a true need for it.”Elora Mukherjee, the director of Columbia Law School’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic and a lawyer who visited a detention facility in Clint, Texas in June., described comforting a six-year-old boy who had been separated from his family. He is “a child, the same age as my son, stuck in a hellhole,” she said.But Thomas Homan, the former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), who had just retired and was a Fox News contributor, and who testified at the hearing, said that “Border Patrol and ICE are merely enforcing the laws enacted by Congress.”“They are doing the best they can under the circumstances,” he added.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioned Homan about a recommendation he gave to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, urging her to opt for the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy that had led to family separations until the president ended it via executive order."So you provided the official recommendation to Secretary Nielsen for the United States to pursue family separation?" Ocasio-Cortez asked."I gave Secretary Nielsen numerous recommendations on how to secure the border and save lives," Homan answered."[But] the recommendation, of the many that you recommended, you recommended family separation?" she asked again."I recommended zero tolerance," Homan said.Besides Ocasio-Cortez, the committee heard emotional testimony from Representatives Veronica Escobar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, who testified about their recent tour of a migrant center in Clint, Texas and described the women and children they met and the conditions they witnessed.*****************************************************July 18, 2019Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan testifies at a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing. He said that the number of family separations at the border had fallen since the summer of 2018, and that they were being done only for compelling reasons."The vast majority" of families are kept together, McAleenan said.McAleenan said in his opening statement that he had pleaded for more than a year with Congress for more funding to address the conditions at the border and to tackle laws that he said incentivize migrants to come to the United States."I have acknowledged that initiative, while well intended, lost public trust, and President Trump was right to end [the zero tolerance policy]," he said, adding that separations are "rare and undertaken in the best interest and safety and welfare of the child."Lawmakers questioned McAleenan about the policy that had led to the separation of more than 2,700 children from parents in 2018. A watchdog reporter later found thousands more may have been separated."As I have testified and warned publicly, dozens of times this year and last, we are facing an unprecedented crisis at the border," McAleenan said. "Combined, that means over 300,000 children have entered our custody since October 1st."Representative Elijah Cummings, the committee chairman, said McAleenan was an architect of the family separations. "The administration wants to blame Democrats for this crisis, but it is the Trump administration's own policies that are causing these problems," he said.“These were all decisions made by the Trump administration," Cummings said. "The damage that the Trump administration has inflicted – and is continuing to inflict – will impact these children for the rest of their lives."Cummings took McAleenan to task for his role in separating migrant children from families, saying, "I’m at a point where I begin to wonder whether there is an empathy deficit."“What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces? Can’t take a shower?” said Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, the chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee. “What’s that about? None of us would have our children in that position. They are human beings.”*****************************************************July 20, 2019Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez calls for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate child separation on the border with Mexico. She said the U.S. government has a life-long responsibility to children it severed from their parents, to provide them with mental health support.“Even if you separate a kid from their parents for two days you have already created life long lasting trauma, Ocasio-Cortez said, speaking at a school in her home district of Queens, New York City. “And there are children who have been separated that we have reunified, and it took about a year to reunify some of these kids with their parents. Lifelong trauma for which we, the United States, are responsible. It chills me to my core to think about 20 years from now, when these kids grow up, the story that they will have about America.”The U.S. has a “lifelong commitment” to the children it separated, Ocasio-Cortez said, adding: “I believe we have responsibility to provide mental healthcare services to those children for the rest of their lives.”*****************************************************July 25, 2019“On family separations, one arm of the Trump administration raised hundreds of red flags to another,” CNN:Hundreds of red flags were raised internally within the Trump administration about how families were being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, including some from months before the controversial "zero tolerance" policy was announced, according to documents reviewed by CNN.The documents include anecdotes of children allegedly blindsided when they were separated from their parents after being apprehended at the southern border. One referral received by the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties describes a 14-year-old who said he was separated from his father in May 2018 "after a meal break while in custody, and was told by officers that his father would be deported."In another, an 11-year-old stated that he "was called aside by an officer and then he did not see his father again." A 10-year-old with "poor communication skills" was allegedly separated from his mother in June 2018.Taken together, the documents provide a rare glimpse into how one part of the Trump administration -- the Department of Health and Human Services -- was flagging cases of concern to another part -- the Department of Homeland Security -- during a tumultuous time that eventually resulted in the separation of thousands of families apprehended at the southern border.HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is charged with the care of unaccompanied migrant children, instructed staff to submit significant incident reports for alleged cases of family separation once the agency started seeing an uptick in cases, according to the agency.The refugee agency was unaware of the "zero tolerance" separation policy prior to its public announcement in April 2018, and the reports were submitted as incidents of abuse in Homeland Security custody and sent to DHS' Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, an agency official said. The zero tolerance policy was officially implemented in May and ended in June after a public outcry.A separation would typically occur under the pretense that there was a significant incident with a family member, such as abuse or neglect, that would prompt an incident report.The procedure continued during zero tolerance. …Of the 850 referrals to the civil rights office of family separation between January 2018 and June 2018, the overwhelming majority are from HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement. Others are from immigrant advocacy groups.Twelve children who were 1-year-old or younger were allegedly separated between December 2017 and May 2018, according to the documents.More than 100 referrals sent to DHS' civil rights office predate the announcement of the controversial policy, according to the documents. Some cite criminal history or prior immigration violations of the parents or guardians.There is a long-standing policy that allows immigration officials to separate a child from a parent if there are concerns for the child's welfare.Other referrals included in the documents are hazier. In February 2018, for example, the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties received email correspondence from an individual on behalf of a 13-year-old who was also allegedly separated from his mother in December 2017, though the basis of the separation was unclear.House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler cited the documents detailing alleged family separations that were obtained by the committee during a panel hearing."These documents are startling," he said."Even more surprising, the 12 children under the age of 1, nine of those separations occurred before the Trump administration enacted the zero tolerance policy. In many cases, family separation happened without warning and without giving the children the chance to say goodbye to their families. Many were not told where their families were being taken," Nadler Democrat added.The referrals do not explain how a case was resolved.Administration watchdog reports have identified numerous problems in how agencies were monitoring and handling family separations.In the summer of 2017, Office of Refugee Resettlement staff noticed a spike in the proportion of separated children relative to other unaccompanied children, according to a Health and Human Services inspector general report released in January.Staff at the refugee agency developed mechanisms to track separations due to operational concerns, according to the report. Younger children, for example, require placement in specially licensed facilities.Homeland Security had previously said that separations continue to take place in cases when the parents have a criminal history or medical concerns. The department, however, was inconsistent in explaining how many children were separated or what happened to them, according to the report."In some cases DHS has provided HHS with limited information about the reasons for these separations," said Ann Maxwell, Assistant Inspector General for Evaluation and Inspections, in January."More children over a longer period of time were separated by immigration authorities and were referred to HHS for care than is commonly discussed in the public debate," Maxwell said. "How many more children were separated is unknown."Last October, a Homeland Security inspector general report also found that the department was "not fully prepared" for the rollout of the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy at the U.S.-Mexico border and that it provided "inconsistent information," which led some parents to not understand that they would be separated from their children and unable to communicate with them.Court orders in an ongoing lawsuit over family separations have forced officials to identify and reunify a majority of those separated.*****************************************************July 30, 2019The American Civil Liberties Union asks a federal judge to block the Trump administration from continuing to separate hundreds of families in defiance of a previous court order. The motion was filed in U.S. District Court in San Diego.Lawyers for the ACLU told Judge Dana M. Sabraw that the Trump administration had taken nearly 1,000 migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border since the judge ordered the United States government to curtail the practice more than a year ago.“It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents,” Lee Gelernt, lead attorney in the ACLU’s lawsuit, said. “Over 900 more families join the thousands of others previously torn apart by this cruel and illegal policy. The administration must not be allowed to circumvent the court order over infractions like minor traffic violations.”*****************************************************July 31, 2019President Trump responds to criticisms by Democratic presidential candidates decrying the treatment of migrants under his administration.During the July 31 debate, the Democratic presidential candidates had lambasted Trump over his policies and rhetoric toward migrants. Senator Kamala Harris had recalled visiting the Homestead, Florida facility migrant children were being held in Florida, while Senator Michael Bennet declared "kids belong in classrooms, not cages.""The cages for kids were built by the Obama Administration in 2014. He had the policy of child separation. I ended it even as I realized that more families would then come to the Border!” Trump tweeted.*****************************************************August 21, 2019The Department of Homeland Security issues a sweeping new set of regulations for detaining migrant children, replacing more than two decades of protections that were put into place under the Flores settlementThe new standards, announced by Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, would have allowed the government to detain children and families for longer periods, revise the minimum standards of care, and end the longstanding consent decree known as the Flores Settlement. They required the approval of a federal judge. Department of Homeland Security officials expected the new rule to be challenged in federal court.“When it was finally settled in 1997,” The New York Times reported, “the [Flores] litigation transformed the way migrant children all across the southwest border were treated after arriving in the United States. No longer could they be held indefinitely in hard-core detention facilities: They had to be released quickly to a family member or guardian or, if that was not possible, transferred speedily to a licensed care facility that did not operate like a jail. A subsequent interpretation of the agreement limited the time most migrant children could spend in detention, generally to no more than 20 days.According to the Times:The Trump administration railed against the “legal loopholes” in the consent decree and tried mightily to upend it. The Flores agreement, the administration argued, helped create the current chaos at the border by providing an incentive for migrant parents to bring their children with them -- the equivalent, under the current legal framework, of a get-out-of-jail-free card. …When the Trump administration last year tried to get around the Flores agreement by separating children from their parents in order to detain the parents alone, the policy created such an uproar that it was soon rescinded, at least officially. Then, administration lawyers went to court to try to win permission to keep children with their parents in detention-type facilities for longer than 20 days.On June 28, 2019, Judge Dolly Gee of Federal District Court in Los Angeles denied the government’s request.In a follow-up article, the Times reported:For more than a year, the White House has pressed the Department of Homeland Security to find a way to eliminate … the Flores settlement, which limits the time children can spend in detention and establishes minimum standards for the holding facilities for families and children. Immigration hard-liners inside the administration say the move is crucial to halting the flow of migrants across the southwestern border.The administration’s goal with the new rule is deterrence, and its message to families fleeing Central American is blunt: Come here and we will lock you up. Critics say it is the latest in a series of policies by President Trump meant to close off the United States from the rest of the world.Madhuri Grewal, policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, released an official announcement stating: “This is yet another cruel attack on children, who the Trump administration has targeted again and again with its anti-immigrant policies. The government should not be jailing kids, and certainly shouldn’t be seeking to put more kids in jail for longer. Congress must not fund this” -- presaging a legal challenge by the ACLU.“This new rule flies in the face of years of clear direction from the courts, and follows this administration’s disturbing pattern of attempting to restrict or outright eliminate legitimate pathways for immigrants to come to the United States legally,” said Todd Schulte, president of Fwd.us, a pro-immigration lobbying group."I'm the one that kept the families together. With what we're doing now, we'll do even more of that, but it will make it almost impossible for people to come into our country illegally," President Trump told reporters at the White House, commenting on the new rule.*****************************************************August 25, 2019In an interview on Fox News, White House aide Stephen Miller (a key architect of the Trump administration’s family separation policy) insists that migrant children who have been locked up by the Trump administration had “psychological damage” that occurred before they were incarcerated.Correspondent John Roberts questioned Miller about the detention policy that allows family separations. He observed that some migrants could be detained for “years” because of the backlog in the immigration system.Miller disagreed, insisting that migrants could be processed in 40 to 60 days in most cases.“These housing facilities are extremely carefully appointed to make sure the rights of migrants are protected,” Miller said. “And everything you’ve heard in the media about this is totally one hundred percent false.”“There is a big issue about holding children longterm,” Roberts interrupted. “The psychological impact.”“The psychological damage is being smuggled!” Miller shouted. “The psychological damage is being trafficked. The psychological damage is putting children in the hands of these criminal organizations.”“Our president has had the courage to stand up to those criminal organizations,” he added, “and the Democrats who are aiding and abetting their business model.”*****************************************************August 26, 2019A lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s abandonment of a long-standing rule governing how long migrant children can be detained (under the provisions of the Flores Settlement) is filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California,California State Attorney General Xavier Becerra and California Governor Gavin Newsom announced the suit. Eighteen states joined California in filing the suit.“Detaining families indefinitely and needlessly inflicting trauma on young children is not an immigration policy -- it’s an abhorrent abuse of power,” Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement. Washington was one of the states that joined in the suit.Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said the Trump administration would be able to “suspend” the standards (rules) for the detention of migrant children set by the Flores settlement if an “influx” of migrants arrived at the southern border, and that the administration’s definition of influx was so broad that many instances of increased immigration over the past several years could have triggered the suspension of these “minimal” detention standards, had the new Trump regulations been in place. He said that the widely reported mistreatment of children at federal border detention sites was proof that the administration could not be left to regulate itself. The new regulations for indefinite detention -- Ferguson and other opponents of the administration’s proposed new rule argued -- would prevent state oversight of immigrant detention by stripping states of their role in regulating the minimum standards for facilities that house migrant children.“States have a well-established role in licensing facilities and foster families that house immigrant children for the federal government,” Ferguson said. “The [new] rules [issued by the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services] cut out states entirely.” He said that would prevent state officials like him from conducting oversight of family detention facilities and facilities for unaccompanied children in their states.*****************************************************August 30, 2019A legal brief filed by more than twenty organizations, including prominent medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, argues that a new federal regulation that would allow the indefinite detainment of migrant children is "contrary to the best interests of the children." The brief accused the government of a "manifest intent ... to detain children indefinitely."The groups argued that detention, especially when prolonged, "is inherently harmful to children." Myra Jones-Taylor, chief policy officer at the child-development advocacy group Zero to Three, one of the organizations filing the brief, said in a statement to CBS News that "even under the best circumstances, and even with their families, placing infants and toddlers in detention centers is not an acceptable option.""Babies do not belong in detention,’ she said. “There is no simpler way to put it. For these young children, the rollback of the Flores Settlement Agreement paves the way for spending a significant time in family detention during a critical developmental period."*****************************************************September 4, 2019U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw orders the government to allow the return of 11 parents who were deported without their children during the Trump administration’s wide-scale separation of immigrant families. The judge found that government agents unlawfully prevented those parents from pursuing asylum cases. In some cases, Sabraw found, agents coerced parents to drop their claims and accept deportation by having them sign documents they didn’t understand or telling them that asylum laws had changed.In reference to one specific case (among others he considered in reaching a decision), Sabraw noted that a mother who was separated from her son after being apprehended in late 2017 abandoned her asylum claim "as a result of the continued separation from her child." The migrant mother cried constantly after the separation and often did not know the whereabouts of her son, according to testimony provided to Sabraw. "She was thereafter allowed only limited phone contact with her son, and during the time they were separated, she suffered not only emotional harm, but physical harm as well," Sabraw wrote. After six months of being separated, the mother -- out of desperation and under the belief that she would be reunited with her son -- chose to abandon her asylum claim. But she was removed from the United States and wasn't reunited with her son.The judge said another father was subject to "coercion and misrepresentations" by an immigration officer. According to the father, the officer told him he could not stay in the United States, even if he feared returning to his home country, because "the president had changed the law." The father was also told that only his son could stay in the U.S.*****************************************************September 19, 2019Five women who were separated from their children after they crossed the border to seek asylum file a lawsuit against the Trump administration in the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, seeking monetary compensation for the trauma they suffered when they were separated.The families involved in the lawsuit had all come to the United States from Guatemala to seek asylum. It was one of the first cases of parents seeking compensatory damages from the government for its intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.According to an American Immigration Council Press release: “Each family was fleeing persecution in their country of origin. Instead of finding safety in the United States, the government forcibly took the children from their mothers and then left them in the dark about where they were taken and when -- if ever -- they would see each other again. The mothers and their children suffered greatly during the separations, which in some cases lasted for months, and continue to suffer."These are patterns of clear abuse," Trina Realmuto, directing attorney at the American Immigration Council, who was representing the mothers in the lawsuit, said.*****************************************************September 27, 2019U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee issues a permanent injunction, in a long-running federal case, blocking the Trump administration from activating new regulations that would have dramatically expanded its ability to detain migrant children with their parents for indefinite periods of time.Lawyers for the Justice Department had urged the judge to allow the Trump administration to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement. President Trump, The Washington Post noted, had been calling Flores a “loophole” that has enabled hundreds of thousands of families, many from impoverished Central American countries, to cross the southern boundary and claim asylum. Those migrants generally were quickly released into the United States because of the 20-day limit on detaining children.In her ruling, Judge Gee wrote that the regulations “fail to implement and are inconsistent with the relevant and substantive terms of the Flores Settlement Agreement,” and therefore cannot take effect, noting that the agreement is a binding contract that was never appealed.“Defendants cannot simply ignore the dictates of the consent decree merely because they no longer agree with its approach as a matter of policy,” the judge wrote. “Defendants cannot simply impose their will by promulgating regulations that abrogate the consent decree’s most basic tenets.”“It’s an enormous victory for migrant children in this country,” Holly Cooper, an attorney for the migrant children in the case, said. “The practical impact of her decision will be that children cannot be indefinitely detained by the federal government and states can continue to make sure the facilities in which children are detained meet basic child welfare standards.”The Justice Department was expected to appeal the decision.*****************************************************October 3, 2019The American Civil Liberties Union files a federal lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of thousands of traumatized children and parents who were forcibly separated under the Trump administration’s practice of separating families at the border.“The suffering and trauma inflicted on these little children and parents is horrific,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said. ‘Tragically, it could take years for these families to heal. Some may never recover, but we are fighting to give them a chance.”Plaintiffs cited in the complaint included families from Guatemala and Honduras who were separated along the border in Arizona for up to 16 months. The ACLU was seeking potentially millions of dollars in damages on behalf of thousands of parents and children.The lawsuit covered separations happening between 2017 to present. During that time, it was alleged in the suit:Thousands of children, including babies and toddlers, were ripped from their parents’ arms with little or no warning. Explanations were not given as to why they were being separated.Answers were not provided as to where the children were taken. Information was not given to either the children or parents about each other’s whereabouts.Children were sent to facilities hundreds or thousands of miles away from their parents. Separated families were not told when -- or even if-- they would ever see each other again. Many children and parents did not see each other again for a year or more.The separated children, after being taken from their parents, were detained in punitive conditions, which included being provided no means of communication with their parents for weeks or months. During this period, parents had no idea how their children were being cared for, or by whom.Several parents attempted suicide, and some suicides occurred. Traumatized children were not provided any meaningful treatment to address the suffering they experienced or the lasting effects of their separation and confinement.The Trump administration ignored the law and their duty to care for separated families -- failing to take even the most basic steps to protect children, maintain information on family units, or mitigate the families’ suffering while in government custody.”The administration’s care and tracking for the separated children was so deficient that when a federal court finally ordered the government to reunify families, government officials were unable to identify which child belonged to which parent.*****************************************************October 22, 2019At the FORTUNE Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, DC, former Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen is asked if she regretted her involvement with family separations. “I don’t regret enforcing the law,” she said. “What I regret is that that information flow and coordination to quickly reunite the families was clearly not in place and that’s why the practice was stopped through an executive order.”*****************************************************October 24, 2019The Trump administration discloses to the American Civil Liberties Union that immigration authorities separated more than 1,500 additional children from their families before its zero tolerance policy was fully implemented, bringing the total number of children separated to about 4,300 before U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw halted the practice.The government provided the new figure, the ACLU said in an announcement, a day before a court-ordered deadline for it to account for previously unidentified family separations at the U.S. southern border.The majority of the children were ages 12 and under, including more than 200 under 5 years old.Judge Sabraw had given the Trump administration six months in April 2019 to disclose the names to the ACLU, which was trying to track down all the families and learn whether they have been reunited.*****************************************************November 5, 2019Judge John A. Kronstadt of the United States District Court in Los Angeles orders the federal government to immediately make available mental health screenings and treatment to thousands of families forcibly separated under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy.In his ruling, the judge held that the Trump administration could be held accountable for the enduring psychological harm brought about by forcibly taking children from their parents at the border with no guarantee of when or how they would be reunited.“This is truly groundbreaking,” Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California Berkeley School of Law, said. “The court is recognizing that when a government creates a danger that inflicts trauma, the government is responsible for providing a solution. It is not something I have seen a court do before.”Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with Public Counsel, which brought the case along with the law firm Sidley Austin, said: “You cannot have a policy of deliberately trying to injure a family bond. Cruelty cannot be part of an enforcement policy, and here it was the cornerstone of the policy.”*****************************************************November 12, 2019A total of 69,550 migrant children were held in the custody of the U.S. government during fiscal year 2019, a record high, according to government data reported by the Associated Press. According to the report, about 4,000 children remained in government custody, while some had been deported or reunited with family in the United States.Dr. Jack Shonkoff, a professor at the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child told the AP that studies show that separations can cause permanent emotional and physical damage to children, saying “early experiences are literally built into our brains and bodies.”“Stable and responsive relationships promote healthy brain architecture,” Shonkoff said. “If these relationships are disrupted, young children are hit by the double whammy of a brain that is deprived of the positive stimulation it needs, and assaulted by a stress response that disrupts its developing circuitry.”Another child trauma expert interviewed, Ryan Matlow, a clinical psychologist at Stanford University, said toxic stress in children is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress syndrome, heart disease, cancer, and even early death. “So we want to be a country that inflicts further trauma on individuals who are experiencing intensive adversity and are seeking refuge and help in a neighboring nation?” he asked. “Are we okay with the implications of doing harm to vulnerable children – to two and three-year-olds and to teenagers as well? Is that something that we can accept?”*****************************************************November 13, 2019Chad Wolf is sworn in as Acting United States Secretary of Homeland Security. His predecessor, Kevin McAleenan, resigned from the post in October.Wolf, formerly the acting undersecretary for policy at DHS, was the chief of staff to McLeenan’s predecessor as DHS Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned under pressure in April 2019. As chief of staff to Nielsen, Wolf played a central role in the “zero tolerance” border crackdown that led to the separation of migrant children from their parents.*****************************************************November 27, 2019A report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, “DHS Lacked Technology Needed to Successfully Account for Separated Migrant Families,” is released. “The report said that Customs and Border Projection officials knew about the deficiencies in their data and technology system when they were planning zero tolerance, and still estimated they would separate 26,000 children without a clear plan to track and reunify them with their parents,” NBC News reported.The administration had previously said in court that an estimated 2,800 children were separated as a result of zero tolerance. But the report, dated November 25, 2019, said that the lack of technology to track which children had been separated meant the agency had to revise that estimate upward to 3,014.*****************************************************January 11, 2020The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) files a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s family separation policy. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two immigrant parents separated from their children by immigration officials at the U.S. border.The SPLC filed the lawsuit with Covington & Burling and Coppersmith Brockelman law firms.“The government has refused to acknowledge that its family separation policy was wrong and that tearing young children away from their parents causes enormous short- and long-term pain and suffering,” Matt Schlesinger, a partner at Covington & Burling, said. “This lawsuit, and future ones like it we plan to file, are designed to obtain compensation to help mitigate the harms our clients and their families have suffered and to ensure the government never again implements such a malicious policy.”The lawsuit alleged that two children represented by the suit suffered abuse while in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency responsible for safeguarding unaccompanied children. The fathers went weeks without knowing their children’s whereabouts, terrified that they would never see them again.“I never dreamed that the United States would treat my son and me this way,” said one of the plaintiffs. “We came looking for safety, and instead, we were caged like animals. No one answered my calls for help when my son grew more and more sick [before they were separated]. He was taken from me and I had no idea what was happening to him. When I learned that he was abused by other boys, I was sick with grief. No one deserves this cruelty.”Another plaintiff was separated from his five-year-old daughter for more than 10 weeks. “It was the worst day of my life when my daughter was taken from me,” he said. “I was forced to watch while government officials lined her up with other children taken from their parents at the hieleraand marched her out the door, not knowing if I’d ever see her again.”*****************************************************January 13, 2020“Judge OKs New Family Separations at US-Mexico Border,” Courthouse News Service:Handing the federal government its first win since it was sued for separating families at the U.S.-Mexico border, [U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw] found continued separations are discretionary and do not violate a court and executive order abandoning the “zero tolerance” immigration policy.[The judge] found that continued family separations since his June 26, 2018, order enjoining the practice make up less than 1% of the over 524,000 family members who entered the U.S. along the southern border.Notably in his order Monday, Sabraw found the government may exclude family reunifications “based on any criminal history” of the parent, an issue attorneys for separated families had argued was an abuse of discretion.He also found the request to review the government’s decision to continue to separate some families based on certain court-approved criteria “warrants caution” and goes beyond the scope of judicial oversight of the executive branch’s right to secure the border.The ruling judge’s ruling concerned a filing in July of the preceding year in which the American Civil Liberties Union accused the administration of continuing to "systematically" separate migrant children from their parents and asked Sabraw to impose more limits on the latitude officials have to separate families.Sabraw said the evidence presented to his court did "not support" the ACLU's position that officials continue to systematically separate families, adding that he believes the administration has been largely complying a ruling he issued in June 2018 which barred separations "absent a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child."*****************************************************January 22, 2020Nine parents who were deported in 2018 as the Trump administration separated thousands of migrant families return to the United States to reunite with children they had not seen in a year and a half. The group arrived at Los Angeles International Airport from Guatemala City in a trip arranged under the order of Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego, who had found the U.S. government had unlawfully prevented them from seeking asylum. Some of the children were at the airport to greet their parents.The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the original family separation lawsuit before Judge Sabraw, had asked the judge to order the return of a small group of parents whose children remained in the U.S. In September 2019, Sabraw required the U.S. to allow 11 parents to come back; he denied relief to 7 other parents.Sabraw found that many of the parents had been given false information by officials and were, in some cases, coerced into waiving their rights and signing off on their deportation. After months of back-and-forth, the American Civil Liberties Union and the administration established and agreed on a mechanism for them to return.*****************************************************March 5, 2020The Office of Inspector General, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, releases a report: “Communication and Management Challenges Impeded HHS's Response to the Zero-Tolerance Policy.” It found that senior Department of Health and Human Services officials failed to act on repeated warnings from staff about family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border, and that staff members were advised not to put controversial information in writing.The report “demonstrates inaction at senior levels of the department that left the federal agency tasked with caring for children [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] unprepared.” CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez reported. “The failure to take proactive measures for the potential of increased family separations put the federal agency in a position where it was reacting to changes, instead of preparing for them. The lack of planning, according to the report, contributed to the challenges staff faced in identifying separated children and reunifying them with their parents.”“The report …. found that Health and Human Services only discovered the 2018 separations were occurring through media reports -- in part because there was no communication between agencies,” The Associated Press reported. “The result was a chaos, with some children languishing in detention well beyond legal limits, others inconsolable in the hands of care providers who had no answers on when parents were returning. Some children were kept waiting in vans for hours in parking lots amid delays in reunification.”*****************************************************March 18, 2020A report dated February 19, 2020 is released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). It found that involved in separating immigrant families failed to accurately track parents and children, making it difficult for the government to reunite them in some cases.The report examined the coordination between the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services, which takes custody of separated immigrant children.Investigators looked at 40 records of children who were separated between June 2018 and March 2019 and found that Border Patrol agents didn't initially record 14 as having entered the U.S. with a parent and failed to record the separation. The GAO also found an additional 10 children among the 40 whose family separations were not documented in Border Patrol’s data system as required."It is unclear the extent to which Border Patrol has accurate records of separated family unit members in its data system," the report stated.The GAO also found that Border Patrol agents inconsistently recorded information about the reasons for and circumstances surrounding family separations on required forms.“Not only was this administration’s family separation policy heartless -- they bungled its implementation at every turn," U.S. Representative Bennie Thompson, chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement. "The Acting DHS Secretary claims no children have been lost -- but is withholding documents on this matter from Congress. It’s time for the Administration to come clean and provide these so we can get a full accounting of this policy.”*****************************************************March 30, 2020press release, American Immigration Council:WASHINGTON--On [March 30], a federal court in Arizona allowed five asylum-seeking mothers and their children who were torn apart under the Trump administration’s family separation policy to move forward with a lawsuit against the United States for the cruel treatment and anguish U.S. immigration agencies inflicted on them. The court denied the government’s motion to dismiss the case.The lawsuit, filed in September 2019 by five parents and their children, claims that the U.S. government intentionally subjected them to extraordinary trauma that will have lifelong implications. …Each plaintiff seeks compensatory damages from the government for its intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence as a result of the administration’s intentional policy to separate migrant families upon entering the United States--a policy that senior government officials have confirmed was designed to deter migrants from seeking refuge in the United States.In the complaint, the mothers described the harrowing circumstances in which immigration officers forcefully separated their children from them. They received no information as to where the government sent their children (most of whom were sent to shelters across the country in New York) and were provided minimal information on their whereabouts for much of their separation, which lasted months in all cases. The mothers were left in agony, believing they would never see their children again.“We are pleased that the court rejected the government’s arguments that the law does not provide a remedy to our clients who suffered under the government’s family separation policy,” said Diana Reiter, an attorney with Arnold & Porter. “We look forward to continuing this lawsuit and seeking redress for our clients.”“In rejecting the government’s attempt to quash this case, the court recognized that the government was not--as it claimed in its motion--enforcing any federal law when it separated these families,” said Trina Realmuto, directing attorney for the American Immigration Council. “The court’s ruling gives these families a chance to hold the government accountable for the horrific impact caused by its ill-conceived family separation policy.” …The U.S. government has admitted to separating at least 4,300 children from their parents or guardians after they crossed the southwestern U.S. border. Reports indicate that the government continues to separate immigrant families entering the United States. ................
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