More than 1,000 migrant parents reunited with their children, but 463 deported

With a court-ordered deadline looming, the government said Tuesday it has reunited 1,012 migrant parents with their children, less than half of the families it must reunify by Thursday.

But court filings also show that 463 adults were deported, possibly without their children, a move that has alarmed immigration advocates who describe the entire process as traumatic to the families involved.

“This is a travesty of epic proportion. We should be ashamed,” said Alida Garcia, coalitions and policy director for FWD.us, an organization that supports immigration reform.

While federal officials say they are working to reunite families, immigrant advocates in California and other states describe a process that is chaotic. They say they’ve been unable to track some of the migrants in detention, as they are moved to new facilities or deported without warning – making it harder for attorneys to help them.

“I spoke to both of my clients. I know they were there Tuesday night. By Wednesday mid-day, they were no longer there,” said attorney Jaqueline Aranda Osorno, of the Public Counsel law firm in Los Angeles, referencing clients held at an immigrant detention center in Adelanto.

“I wasn’t able to talk with them after they left Adelanto.”

Aranda Osorno later learned that both men were transferred to a detention center in Texas. One was reunited with his son and released; but she said it’s unclear what’s happening with her second client.

The migrant detainees, many of them lawfully seeking asylum from Central America, continue to be bounced from one location to another while their children are sent elsewhere, advocates and others said.

Aranda Osorno’s clients were transferred to different detention centers, including a federal penitentiary in Victorville and the facility in Adelanto, before winding up in the Port Isabel Service Processing Center in Texas.

Of the 1,000 or so immigrant detainees recently sent to the Federal Correctional Complex Victorville, 60 were fathers separated from their children at the border, said Rep. Mark Takano, a Democrat from Riverside who visited the Victorville prison earlier this month.

Takano said all 60 fathers were later transferred to Adelanto.

According to a Justice Department court filing late Monday, 1,187 children who earlier were separated from their families by federal officials were reunified with parents, sponsors or guardians. That’s less than half the pool of 2,551 children 5 and older who have been separated.

The federal immigration policy of family separation, though not created by the Trump administration, was cranked up for several months earlier this year. Trump touted the move as “zero tolerance,” while immigration advocates argued it was punishment to would-be immigrants, including many legally seeking asylum at the U.S. border. Trump, facing political opposition, ordered that the practice be discontinued.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego had set a deadline of Thursday, July 25, for the government to reunite the families with children age 5 and older. That came following an earlier deadline to reunite younger children with their families.

On Tuesday, government officials said the number of parents reunified with their children had increased to 1,012, and that another 1,637 parents are in ICE custody and eligible for reunification, according to Kathryn Shepherd, of the National Advocacy Counsel, Immigration Justice Campaign.

“This is a remarkable achievement,” Judge Sabraw said Tuesday, according to a news report in talkingpointsmemo.com. “The government is to be commended and has done yeoman’s work in this regard.”

But the quick-moving changes have led to charges that the family separation policy has also been used as a tool of coercion.

Some of the adults, including some who are illiterate, have been asked to sign documents they do not understand, and in some cases threatened they may not see their children if they don’t agree to be deported, according to attorneys and advocates that represent them.

“They were being pressured by ICE to sign papers, that it would be the fastest way they could see their child again,” said Royce Murray, policy director with the American Immigration Council, during an online press conference Tuesday. “(They were told) that if they chose to fight their case, they would be kept in detention for many months longer, prolonging their separation from their children.”

Jennifer Falcon, of RAICES, the Refugee and Immigrant Center in San Antonio, Texas, said one 13-year-old girl was told by immigration officials that her mother “doesn’t want you and she doesn’t love you.”  Another parent, she said, was warned that if she wept while talking to her child she would be separated from that child permanently.

“These families are extremely traumatized,” Falcon said. “We are hearing cases every single day: these children are not the same.”