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Judge says government has ‘sole’ duty to find and reunite immigrant families

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A federal judge here expressed frustration Friday as he ordered the Trump administration to come up with a plan — quickly — for reuniting the remaining migrant parents and children who were separated at the border, saying the government is “100% responsible” for the fact that some 500 families remain separated.

“For every parent not found will be a permanently orphaned child,” said U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered in June that 2,500 children be reunited with their parents. “That will be 100% of the government’s responsibility. There has to be a plan so that does not happen.”

Sabraw said only about a dozen of the parents have been identified for possible reunification.

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“That is not acceptable,” he said in a hearing by telephone with a government lawyer and the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing parents who claim they did not understand their legal options when their children were being taken from them.

Sabraw said he was disappointed that attorneys on both sides had not brought him specific plans for speeding up reunification as he had ordered last week. He said the government has the greater duty, but wants both parties to collaborate.

The family separations were ordered as part of a now-abandoned government policy of “zero tolerance” for bordercrossers, many of whom journeyed from Guatemala and Honduras.

Still living apart from their children are some 400 parents who were deported or otherwise left the country, and about 80 parents who were allowed to remain in the U.S., Department of Justice attorney Scott Stewart said.

Sabraw ordered attorneys to return Aug. 10 with plans.

“The government has the sole obligation and responsibility to make this happen,” he said.

But, he added, the ACLU is to cooperate by establishing a lead counsel or steering committee to decide how to best track down their deported or missing clients and advise them of their legal options.

Attorneys for both parties said they would comply.

Sabraw said it was “absolutely essential” for the government to select one person or team to guide reunification across the various federal agencies and report back to court in a week.

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Government officials have said they have documents showing that hundreds of parents willingly left the U.S. without their children. The ACLU and other civil rights attorneys strongly disagree, saying many parents for whom English is not their native language did not understand the documents they were signing.

On Thursday, government attorneys filed papers asking the ACLU to take the lead in finding the missing parents, saying the organization is in touch with a network of lawyers and nongovernment organizations capable of tracking their clients.

The ACLU, in its court filings, asked Sabraw to order the government to dig into its own records on the separated families and turn over information such as phone numbers and addresses that would help attorneys to find their clients.

On Friday, the ACLU’s Lee Gelernt told Sabraw that the government has provided essentially useless information on 120 parents, such as the address of a detention center or the name of a large city without a specific street address.

“We see no reason why each case manager can’t go through their files,” Gelernt said of government workers assigned to process the migrant families.

Gelernt said there is also concern for volunteers with nonprofits who might venture into dangerous countrysides in strife-ridden Guatemala or Honduras, looking for parents, when they might instead be able to pick up a telephone.

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The ACLU has said in court papers that the government had not followed Sabraw’s orders to provide full information about parents deemed not eligible for reunification, primarily on the basis that they had a criminal past.

Gelernt raised the issue again Friday, saying lawyers want more details on about 30 parents declared ineligible. The files on 18 parents, he said, refer vaguely to a “criminal history” while one case mentioned a theft 12 years earlier in the parent’s home country.

“We don’t have enough information to contest or not contest the criminal ineligibility,” Gelernt said.

Stewart responded that it should be up to attorneys who have doubts to bring notice of those cases to the government.

The judge said he would address the issue in a future court order.

Repard writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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