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Page 8 The Skanner August 1, 2018 News Immigrant Families Remain Apart With No End in Sight By Nomaan Merchant and Sonia Perez , Associ- ated Press HOUSTON — As the U.S. government said it had reunited every im- migrant family it could, Josefina Ortiz Corrales remained in an immi- gration detention cen- ter and her adopted son in the care of her elder daughter. Paulina Gutierrez was in her hometown in Guatemala, earning less than $2 a day pre- paring strings for can- dle wicks while praying for the quick return of her 7-year-old daughter from government custo- dy in Arizona. She cries every night without fail as she thinks about her decision to agree to be deported in the mistaken belief that the girl would come home with her. Hundreds of fami- lies remain separated a day after Thursday’s court-ordered deadline, with no reunification in sight. Lawyers and advo- cates sharply criticized the U.S. government for creating a bureaucrat- ic and legal snarl that’s made it difficult to reuni- fy families and created a scenario where some may never see their chil- dren again. “There is no question that there may be fami- lies that are permanent- ly separated as a result of this policy,” said Mi- chelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Com- mission. The government had until the end of day Thursday to reunify more than 2,500 fam- ilies separated at the U.S.-Mexico under Pres- ident Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigra- tion policy that stoked a global outrage. The government said it had reunited more than 1,800 children over the age of 5 with parents or placed them with sponsors who are often relatives. That leaves 700 who remain apart, includ- ing what is believed to be more than 400 cases where the parents have been deported. The gov- ernment will have to come up with a plan for completing those for- eign reunions by flying children back to Central America, but advocacy groups are already step- ping in to fill the void. The American Civil Liberties Union plans to start looking for all the parents on their own while going back through all of the cases of those not yet reunified to see if they could put more fam- ilies back together. The advocacy group Kids in Need of Defense has de- ployed staff to Honduras and Guatemala to facili- tate reunions. “I think it’s going to be really hard detective work,” said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liber- ties Union attorney. The government says the mothers and fathers of 120 children “waived reunification” and doz- ens more weren’t eligible to get their children back because they had crim- inal records or weren’t the biological parent. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say some of the parents who were de- ported had the chance to take their children and declined after already paying smugglers thou- sands of dollars to make the dangerous journey from Central America and wanting a better life for their kids to stay in the U.S. “And once their chil- dren are here, they are generally not going to give up the opportuni- ty for their children to remain in the country,” said Matthew Albence, the executive director of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations. Many parents say that’s not true. Several have told The Associated Press and im- migration lawyers that they were told in deten- tion to sign paperwork that they didn’t fully un- derstand. Gutierrez, 26, says she crossed the Rio Grande about two months ago with her 7-year-old daughter, Antonia. Un- der the terms of the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, she was subject to arrest and prosecution for entering the country without per- mission. She was eventually sent to a detention center in Arizona. She accuses im- migration agents of lying to her so that she would agree to be deported. “If not, you will spend months here,” she re- called agents telling her. “They said, ‘It’s not us who want to do this to you. It’s the president who is ordering this.’” AP PHOTO/MATT YORK Hundreds of families remained separated after July 26 deadline A child is carried by an adult as they arrive at Lutheran Social Services, Thursday, July 26, 2018, in Phoenix. Lutheran Social Services stated they were expecting reunited families separated at the border when apprehended entering the United States to come through their facility. Gutierrez does video chats with her daughter, regularly looks back at photos of her and hopes she can be returned by her 8th birthday. The ACLU this week filed affidavits from sev- eral attorneys that detail what it considers flawed procedures, including limited phone access and strict visitation policies, language barriers and being given only a few minutes to decide wheth- er to leave their children in the United States. One lawyer, Luis Cruz, said in a filing that he met five fathers who were on a government list of parents who had relin- quished their rights to reunify with their chil- dren. The fathers all said they had signed a gov- ernment form despite not being able to read or write in Spanish or En- glish. Many adults from Central America, includ- ing Gutierrez, are from indigenous communities and Spanish is their sec- ond language. Other parents are still in the United States, but in immigration deten- tion. Their children have been released to sponsor relatives. Lawyers say that has included parents who the government is detaining because they were de- ported and then tried to re-enter the country. 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