Yup, this is everything the mighty United States can do after stealing 103 babies under the age of 5 years old. Fifty seven have been ‘reunitied’ (according to the government and who knows what they mean by that of if they’re making it up out of the whole cloth?) and forty six have been left behind.
For 22 of them there are a variety of reasons offered–
- 22 children couldn’t be reunited due to safety concerns posed by the adults:
- 11 adults have a criminal history (charges or convictions for child cruelty, kidnapping, murder, human smuggling, domestic violence, etc.).
- 7 adults were found not to be a parent.
- 1 adult falsified a birth certificate (parentage is being examined).
- 1 adult was alleged to have abused the kid.
- 1 adult had planned to house the kid with an adult charged with sexually abusing a child.
- 1 adult is currently being treated for a communicable disease.
- 24 children are not currently eligible for reunification due to other circumstances:
- 12 adults have been deported and are being contacted.
- 9 adults are in custody of the U.S. Marshals Service for other offenses.
- 2 adults are in custody of state jails for other offenses.
This sample of 103 is representative of a universe of at least 3,000 cases (many reputable sources indicate more that 5,000) of minors illegally kidnapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Customs and Border Patrol (sound redundant? It does to me too. ICE until recently was the much friendlier named Immigration and Naturalization Service, as if we welcomed immigrants and naturalized citizens and we wanted to provide “services” to help them do that).
That’s at least 1300 children stolen as ransom for Trump’s ugly, stupid, and feckless Wall.
Trump administration says 57 young children have been reunited with parents
Associated Press
Thu 12 Jul 2018
The administration was under a court mandate to reunify families separated between early May and 20 June, when Donald Trump signed an executive order that stopped his own policy of family separations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who had been separated from her child, and US district court judge Dana Sabraw ordered all children reunited with their parents.
Fifty-seven children were reunited with their parents as of Thursday morning, administration officials said.
“Throughout the reunification process, our goal has been the wellbeing of the children and returning them to a safe environment,” according to a statement from the heads of the three agencies responsible for the process.
Sabraw’s deadline for reunification had already come and gone Tuesday night. In a response Thursday morning, Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project said: “If in fact 57 children have been reunited because of the lawsuit, we could not be more happy for those families. But make no mistake about it: the government missed the deadline even for these 57 children.”
The officials said 46 of the children were not eligible to be reunited with their parents; a dozen parents had already been deported and were being contacted by the administration. Nine were in custody of the US marshals service for other offenses. One of the children deemed ineligible was identified Tuesday as perhaps being a US citizen, along with their parent who officials have been unable to locate for over a year. Officials declined to provide more information on that case Thursday.
In 22 other cases, adults posed safety concerns, they said. Officials said 11 adults had serious criminal histories including child cruelty, murder or human smuggling. Seven were not determined to be a parent, one had a false birth certificate, one had allegedly abused the child. Another planned to house the child with an adult charged with sexually abusing a child.
The zero-tolerance policy calls for the criminal prosecution of anyone caught crossing the border illegally. Because parents can’t take their children to jail, they were separated. The move caused an international uproar.
…
Part of the issue, administration officials said, is that systems were not set up to reunify parents with their children; they were set up to manage tens of thousands of minors who cross the border illegally without family. Health and human services manages their care, the US. homeland security has control over adults in immigration detention, and the justice department manages the immigration courts.Earlier this week, government attorneys told Sabraw that the Trump administration would not meet the deadline for about 20 children under five because it needed more time to track down parents who have been deported or released into the US.
Sabraw indicated more time would be allowed only in specific cases where the government showed good reasons for a delay.
The administration defended its screening, saying it discovered parents with serious criminal histories, five adults whose DNA tests showed they were not parents of the children they claimed to have, and one case of credible child abuse.
The administration faces a second, bigger deadline – 26 July – to reunite more than 2,000 older children with their families. Immigration attorneys say they are seeing barriers to those reunifications from a backlog in the processing of fingerprinting of parents to families unable to afford the airfare to fly the child to them – which could run as high as $1,000.