Judge orders list of children separated from parents at border

The Trump administration asked a judge Friday to extend the deadline for reunifying families separated at the border in cases where the government suspects the adults may not really be parents of the children they’re claiming.

The government filing appears to contradict a statement by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who said Thursday the USA would return immigrant children under five by July 10 to comply with the court order.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego previously ordered the U.S.to return all children under age five to their parents by July 10 and all other minors by July 26.

At that hearing, Judge Dana Sabraw asked how numerous approximately 100 children under age 5 the government believes could be reunified by the Tuesday deadline.

Azar said that verification process in some cases involves DNA testing. The process was being carried out “as expeditiously as possible”, he said.

Without the family identification numbers to connect them, immigrant parents and their children appear in federal computers as individuals with separate cases and no relation to one another.

The government did not request a specific new set of deadlines, but instead sought to “prepare a proposal for an alternative timeline”.

Trump has spoken out repeatedly against lengthy judicial processes to determine migrants’ eligibility for immigration, asylum or deportation, arguing they are a waste of U.S. resources.

The judge noted that “the government readily keeps track of personal property of detainees in criminal and immigration proceedings. yet the government has no system in place to keep track of, provide effective communication with, and promptly produce alien children”.

The separations have become a political disaster for the Trump administration, roundly criticized by members of Congress in both parties amid public outrage.

Sabraw’s ruling also applies to families separated before the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy was implemented in May. But the Trump administration didn’t maintain ― and, in some cases, reportedly destroyed ― clear records of which children were separated from their parents.

Attorneys also argued that the government shouldn’t have to reunite the children whose parents were already deported, but Sabraw confirmed that it did, according to The Huffington Post.

Azar also warned illegal immigrants that the onus was on them to stay with their children. Its database has some information about the children’s parents but wasn’t created to reunify families under the court’s deadline.

Officials are attempting to match the remaining parents – they did not say how many – with their children, said Jonathan White, a top federal official working on the reunification effort with HHS and other agencies.

‘It’s important to remember that information from children can at times be unreliable, ‘ Azar said.

Advocacy groups including the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit, have questioned the government’s contention it may need more time to safely reunite families, and have raised concerns about whether it has a comprehensive plan to bring families together.

Immigration officials said they’ve relocated 23 parents to facilities that are closer to the HHS shelters where their children are staying.

Generally, the legal bar for separating children from parents is extremely high, involving a finding that “the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child”.