US wants 2 years to ID migrant kids separated from families
Source: Associated Press
US wants 2 years to ID migrant kids separated from families
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
April 6, 2019
SAN DIEGO (AP) The Trump administration wants up to two years to find potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the border before a judge halted the practice last year, a task that it says is more laborious than previous efforts because the children are no longer in government custody.
The Justice Department said in a court filing late Friday 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 administration would begin by sifting through names for traits most likely to signal separation for example, children under 5.
The administration would provide information on separated families on a rolling basis to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families and criticized the proposed timeline on Saturday.
We strongly oppose a plan that could take up to two years to locate these families, said Lee Gelernt, the ACLUs lead attorney. The government needs to make this a priority.
Sabraw ordered last year that more than 2,700 children in government care on June 26, 2018 be reunited with their families, which has largely been accomplished. Then, in January, the U.S. Health and Human Services Departments internal watchdog reported that thousands more children may have been separated since the summer of 2017. The departments inspector general said the precise number was unknown.
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