“Separating a child from a family in most communities requires a child welfare specialist and involvement of the judicial system,” USA Today reports, “often with a judge scrutinizing the case for months or even years.” This, however, isn’t the case at the southern border, where federal immigration agents are deciding on their own to separate families, in some cases basing their reasoning on outright lies.

The Texas Civil Rights Project says in a new report that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers accused one dad of being a gang member but provided no evidence to back up their claim. In July, another dad was accused of faking his daughter’s birth certificate and then was separated from her. “He was not given an interpreter during his interview.” But the paperwork was real, and DNA testing proved he was her dad. They weren’t reunited until the next month.

Judge Dana Sabraw ordered a stop to family separation at the border last summer, but made an exception for cases in which the parent is a danger to the child. The problem with that, as USA Today notes, is that “at the border, the removal decision is made solely by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the field. No child welfare specialist is required, and no judge is involved in a decision that cannot be appealed.” It’s clear agents are abusing this exception.

Even CBP’s former commissioner under the Obama administration “questioned whether agents should be conducting the child welfare investigations alone,” saying that families are fleeing traumatic situations, and nervous behavior relating to that could then be used by officers to justify separating them. "How do you determine whether the child is afraid of the parent,” Gil Kerlikowske asked, “or afraid of the Border Patrol agent in the green uniform?"

The American Civil Liberties Union, which brought forward the lawsuit to reunite separated families, plans to raise this issue this week in ongoing court proceedings relating to the lawsuit. "The government appears to be doing an end run around the court order by unilaterally declaring parents a danger, and failing to give parents the ability to rebut that charge," the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt said.

Nor should agents who have been caught gleefully destroying life-saving jugs of water in the desert or accused of sexually assaulting minors be left to decide child welfare concerns. Sabraw should take this decision out of their hands. There must also be a push to end another crisis, which is that kids separated under the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy remain in U.S. custody, 210 days after Sabraw’s reunification deadline. Family separation remains a crisis.