While the East Coast was trying to get some well needed shut eye, a district court judge in California issued an injunction against the Trump administration from separating children and said children already separated must be reunited within 30 days:
CBS NEWS – A judge in California on Tuesday ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days, setting a hard deadline in a process that has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might again see their parents. If children are younger than 5, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.
Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or doesn’t want to be with the child. It also requires the government to provide phone contact between parents and their children within 10 days.
The lawsuit in San Diego involves a 7-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.
Here’s more from the LA Times:
A federal judge in San Diego issued a preliminary injunction Tuesday at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union that calls for all children affected by the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy to be reunited with their parents within 30 days.
In a strongly worded opinion, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw wrote “the facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance — responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government’s own making. They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution.”
Under the order, children younger than 5 years old must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, while older children must be reunited with their parents within 30 days. Within 10 days, federal authorities must allow parents to call their children if they’re not already in contact with them.
“The unfortunate reality is that under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property. Certainly, that cannot satisfy the requirements of due process,” Sabraw wrote.
The order also says parents can’t be detained or deported without their children, unless they are unfit or pose a danger.
So if children can’t be separated from their parents, does this mean we’re officially back to ‘catch and release’? Because if you remember, the 1997 Flores settlement along with the subsequent 9th circuit ruling said that both unaccompanied and accompanied children couldn’t be held in custody beyond 20 days.
So if there can be no family separation but children can’t be held longer than 20 days, it seems to me that everyone has to be released unless they can be processed in less than 20 days – which seems unlikely given the backlog and the need for more judges.
Or am I missing something here?