Maureen Franco, head of the public defender’s office, says parents are ‘inconsolable’ at having their children taken from them

The Trump administration’s policy of forcibly separating children from their parents after they have entered the US illegally is akin to kidnapping, a senior public official has said.

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Maureen Franco, the head of the public defender’s office that covers much of the border between Texas and Mexico, said her team of lawyers were now dealing with so many cases hauled into criminal court after unlawful border crossings that it is like “a cattle call” of distraught parents.

Many clients are “inconsolable” after having their children taken away, she told the Guardian in an exclusive interview.

She considers the children “kidnapped” by the government, she said. “Without any authority to do that … the child is taken by force,” she added, in the weeks since the Trump administration declared “zero tolerance” of illegal border crossings from Mexico and began tearing families apart.

Franco’s office sits in a nondescript federal building in downtown El Paso, just a mile from the US border with Mexico, opposite the court building where the cases are piling up.

Dozens of distraught parents are being put before a judge on criminal charges every day, many fleeing violence and poverty in Central America and Mexico. Franco and her team of public defenders have suddenly found themselves on the frontlines of the chaos, confusion and heartbreak caused by the way the laws are now being enforced.

She described the unlawful misdemeanor that the migrants are routinely charged with after a first unauthorized border crossing as “a petty offense”.

“They are taking children away from their parents for the equivalent of a traffic ticket,” she said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Maureen Franco: ‘They are taking children away from their parents for the equivalent of a traffic ticket.’ Photograph: Patrick Timmons for the Guardian

Migrants are being brought into court to plead more than a dozen at a time.

“I hate saying it, but it’s a cattle call,” she said.

Franco said she and her team of public defenders did not normally talk to the media.

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“But we have to get this out, we have to let people know what is happening,” she said. As the director of the federal public defender’s office for the western district of Texas, her district covers more than half the border between Texas and Mexico and sprawls all the way to Waco, south of Dallas, and includes Austin and San Antonio, as one of the four federal judicial districts in the huge state.

She made the point that parents who are innocent until found guilty being separated from their children at the outset is the equivalent of punishment before due process.

“The parental-child relationship is a fundamental right protected by the US Constitution,” Franco said. “Anybody in our country has the protection of the constitution. The supreme court has been clear about that. The parent may have committed a crime but the child did not. Children have rights and these are being trampled on.”

She said things began to change last summer, after John Kelly, then head of the Department of Homeland Security, left that office to become chief of staff to Donald Trump. Her office had understood in January 2017, after Trump was inaugurated as president, that the administration would not separate families, she said.

Quick guide Why are families being separated at US border? Show Hide Why are children being separated from their families? In April 2018, the US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced a “zero tolerance” policy under which anyone who crossed the border without legal status would be prosecuted by the justice department. This includes some, but not all, asylum seekers. Because children can’t be held in adult detention facilities, they are being separated from their parents. Immigrant advocacy groups, however, say hundreds of families have been separated since at least July 2017. More than 200 child welfare groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the United Nations, said they opposed the practice. What happens to the children? They are supposed to enter the system for processing “unaccompanied alien children”, which exists primarily to serve children who voluntarily arrive at the border on their own. Unaccompanied alien children are placed in health department custody within 72 hours of being apprehended by border agents. They then wait in shelters for weeks or months at a time as the government searches for parents, relatives or family friends to place them with in the US. This already overstretched system has been thrown into chaos by the new influx of children. Can these children be reunited with their parents? Immigration advocacy groups and attorneys have warned that there is not a clear system in place to reunite families. In one case, attorneys in Texas said they had been given a phone number to help parents locate their children, but it ended up being the number for an immigration enforcement tip line. Advocates for children have said they do not know how to find parents, who are more likely to have important information about why the family is fleeing its home country. And if, for instance, a parent is deported, there is no clear way for them to ensure their child is deported with them. What happened to families before? When an influx of families and unaccompanied children fleeing Central America arrived at the border in 2014, Barack Obama’s administration detained families. This was harshly criticized and a federal court in 2015 stopped the government from holding families for months without explanation. Instead, they were released while they waited for their immigration cases to be heard in court. Not everyone shows up for those court dates, leading the Trump administration to condemn what it calls a “catch and release” program. By Amanda Holpuch Read more



“In the past these cases would not have been prosecuted at all and families would be kept together,” Franco said, while they were processed by the immigration authorities.

From the summer of 2017, however, she noticed that prosecutions were happening with increasing frequency. Then in April, the Trump administration removed the discretion government lawyers had when deciding to prosecute illegal entry cases, directing prosecution in all cases of illegal entry.

Many in court are pleading guilty in hopes that they will be reunited with their children more quickly, even though many don’t know where their children have been taken by the authorities.

“Parents just want to get out of jail as soon as possible so they can be reunited with their children. So they plead guilty,” she said.

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But a criminal record has serious immigration consequences. “A guilty plea and sentence can jeopardize a future claim for political asylum in immigration court,” she said.

Neither does a quick exit from jail through a guilty plea mean family reunification. One of Franco’s federal public defenders, Sergio García, currently has a case on appeal to the fifth circuit court of appeals in New Orleans, against the government for deporting four parents back to Central America without their children. It is unclear whether these children have been put in foster homes or immigrant detention in the US.

Franco is in charge of 50 public defenders and additional paralegals and administrative staff. She said many of the paralegals spend hours every day on the phone trying to contact other family members of parents and children who have been separated at the border, whether in the US or south of the border. Or on the phone to the federal authorities, trying to find out where children have been taken, even though that it not strictly part of their legal work.

“Part of our role is to alleviate our clients’ concern so they can concentrate on their cases. If helping parents find their children brings a moment of peace then we will do it,” she said.

Patrick Timmons is a freelance reporter based on the US-Mexico border in El Paso–Juárez and Mexico City