Although the Trump Administration claims they met the court’s deadline to reunite children with their parents, that is not the case, according to an ACLU Civil Rights Lawyer. Per the Trump Administration, 1,820 children have been reunited with their parents, and 650 are “ineligible.” Of the 650, 400 are deemed ineligible because the parents were deported without their children. And because of their initial lack of proper record-keeping, uniting them is extremely complex. Of the ones that were reunited, 1000 families were refused asylum and could be deported immediately, but the ACLU has asked for a seven-day delay so that each case can be treated individually. On top of the trauma that has already been inflicted, parents are being pressured by ICE to sign a paper saying they agree to be deported with their children. Parents have expressed that is virtually no choice because if they agree, they are sentencing their children to probable abuse, rape, assault, murder or forcible joining of gangs. In the case of older children, parents may consider seeking asylum for their children to save them from the evil environment of their native country. Mazie Hirono, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that someone from Homeland Security described the detention centers as a “summer camp.” This is mind-blowing, given that a six-year old child has been molested twice in the Southwest Key detention center here in Arizona by an older detainee, and that child was forced to sign a document saying she was warned to “stay away from that older child.”
Submitted by: Uncage and Reunite Families Research Committee
Source: MSNBC, 7/27/2018 and 7/31/2018, reported on the “All in with Chris Hayes” show and by MSNBC’s Ari Melber, substituting for Rachel Maddow on 7/30/2018.
