Judge Rejects Trump Administration’s Attempts To Shrug Off Responsibility For Finding Deported Parents
But U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw also directed the ACLU to create a steering committee to work with the federal government in its efforts to locate the parents. Meanwhile, new numbers show that far fewer parents than the government first reported waived the chance to be back together with their children before being deported.
The Wall Street Journal:
Judge Orders Trump Administration To Find Hundreds Of Deported Parents
A federal judge said the Trump administration is responsible for finding hundreds of immigrant parents deported or released into the U.S. without their children in the wake of the government’s policy of separating families at the Mexican border. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said not finding those parents, as many as 400 who may have been deported primarily to Central America, could leave hundreds of children permanently orphaned. “That is 100% the responsibility of the administration,” Judge Sabraw said during a hearing Friday in San Diego. (Caldwell, 8/3)
The Washington Post:
Government Lowers Number Of Migrant Parents It Says Waived Reunification With Children
The number of migrant parents who have signed away the right to be reunited with their children is significantly lower than the Trump administration has said before, according to fresh information the government filed in a family-separation court case. The latest figures show that 34 parents waived the chance to be back together with their children — compared with the 120 that the government reported a week earlier. Migrants’ advocates and congressional Democrats have challenged the idea that large numbers of parents were signing away those rights, contending that some — traumatized by the separations — were misled, did not understand the form or never signed in the first place. (Goldstein, 8/3)