Judge gives US 6 months to identify children split at border
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The federal government has six months to identify potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border early in President Donald Trump’s term, a judge ordered Thursday.
Trump administration officials said they had a goal of six months but opposed any deadline, saying it could take as long as two years to reunite children with their parents if efforts to speed up the process fail.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw said he would be willing to consider an extension past Oct. 25 but that he wanted to establish a firm date.
“It is important for all government actors to have a timeframe, a deadline,” he said. “You tend to stand on it.”
The administration will review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children in custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018 — the day before Sabraw halted the general practice of separating families and ordered that children under government care at the time be reunited in 30 days.
More than 2,700 children had been separated when Sabraw issued his June order and they have largely been reunited. Then, in January, the internal watchdog for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department reported that thousands more children may have been split since summer 2017. The department’s inspector general said the precise number was unknown.
Jonathan White, a commander of the U.S. Public Health Service and Health and Human Services’ point person on family reunification, testified for about an hour on how he would oversee the effort. After he spoke, the judge praised his continued involvement, calling him “a beacon of light.”
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http://www.apnews.com/75bf9e49722248949d6af4c5c67a728c?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition
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