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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