Judge will not extend deadlines for Trump administration to reunite families

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration Tuesday to abide by an order to reunite dozens of children with their parents by the end of the day, turning down a Department of Justice request for more time.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered the administration to reunite nearly 3,000 children separated by federal immigration agents, asked an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union to prepare a proposal for possible punishment if the government misses Tuesday's deadline to reunite the first round of families.

"These are firm deadlines," Sabraw said. "They’re not aspirational goals."

Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian said DNA tests being conducted on 16 parents and children to confirm they are indeed related could stretch into Wednesday. Sabraw didn't budge.

"They need to respond," he said. "They need to be ... aware of the deadlines. I expect these tasks would be provided today."

The government faces two deadlines to reunite families separated by immigration agents, most under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy.

All children under age 5 must be reunited by Tuesday, a group that includes about 100 children. Sabraw concluded that 63 of those must be reunited by Tuesday. The others have more complicated cases, including parents who may pose a threat to their child, those in state and federal prisons facing non-immigration, criminal charges, and 12 who have been removed from the country.

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All other minors – almost 3,000 of them – must then be reunited by July 26.

Sabraw said he was encouraged to see the work done by various federal agencies involved in detaining and reuniting parents and children who are spread out around the country. He made clear that the deadlines will remain.

The only area where Sabraw provided some wiggle room for the administration is in cases where the parent has been deported. He said those families must be reunited under his order, but he acknowledged that those reunifications will take time. He said he will lay out a plan for those reunions in the days to come.

Sabraw allowed the government to use a quicker approach to reuniting families. The Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for the care of minors who have been separated, has been following guidelines established by Congress in 2000 before releasing any child from its custody.

Fabian explained that those requirements slowed the government's ability to quickly reunite parents with their children. The law – the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act – requires background checks of sponsors, in-person checks of where the child would live and a full screening of people who live in that home.

Sabraw ruled that the law was designed for unaccompanied minors – children caught crossing the border alone. Although he urged the government to look out for the best interest of each child it releases, he ruled that the government doesn't have to follow every single step of the process established by the law.

"Everyone is rolling in the same direction here, it's just a matter of streamlining the process," he said.

That should come as a relief to the teams of attorneys and volunteers assisting parents in a reunification process that got off to a difficult and complicated start.

Attorney Jennifer Rikoski, who volunteered to help immigrants detained at the Port Isabel processing facility near Brownsville, Texas, characterized the reunion process as bureaucratic chaos.

"There's no one taking ownership from a case management perspective of each family," said Rikoski, a Boston-based lawyer who said she volunteered out of a sense of duty to the legal system. "My sense is that people are so compartmentalized that no one knows what the right next step is."

As an example, Rikoski said, no one from the government knew who was supposed to accept forms notifying officials that detained immigrants had attorneys. Sorting that out took an entire week, she said, as did figuring out how to request a "credible fear" interview – a necessary step toward requesting asylum.

"If you've got people from the best law firms in America who are struggling to navigate this system, can you imagine how difficult it is for people trapped in the system?" asked Rikoski, a mergers and acquisitions expert with Ropes & Gray who has aided Iraqi refugees. "For the parents and kids who we hope to unite, it's a painstakingly slow process we have to go through."