Post by Admin on Jul 9, 2018 16:35:57 GMT -4
1-year-old immigrant goes to court to get reunited with family
PHOENIX — The federal government is under a court order to reunite immigrant children with their families. But in the meantime, some children have had to appear in immigration courts without their parents for deportation proceedings.
A 1-year-old boy had a court appearance on Friday before an immigration judge in Phoenix. He drank milk from a bottle, played with a small purple ball, and occasionally asked for water before being called before the judge.
The immigration judge could hardly contain his unease with the situation during the portion of the hearing in which he asks immigrant defendants whether they understand the proceedings.
‘‘I’m embarrassed to ask it, because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a 1-year-old could learn immigration law,’’ Judge John W. Richardson told the lawyer representing the boy.
The boy is one of hundreds of children who must be reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, many of them split from mothers and fathers as a result of the Trump administration’s ‘‘zero-tolerance policy.’’
The administration has asked for more time to reunite 101 children under 5 years old who were separated from their parents after crossing the border.
The original order set a deadline of Tuesday to reunite children under age 5 with their parents, and July 26 to reunite everyone else.
A federal judge in San Diego has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the request for a delay of some cases.
US District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Justice Department to share a list of the 101 children by Saturday with the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued the administration to force the young children and families to be reunited.
Sabraw is hoping that by Monday, the two sides can agree on which of the children can be excused from the deadline while government officials seek more information on the parents’ claims.
Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian told the judge that the government is deploying significant resources to ensure that children are being reunited with parents quickly.
The family separations have become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks on end dominated the news in recent weeks.
Critics have also seized on the nation’s immigration court system that requires children — some still in diapers — to have appearances before judges and go through deportation proceedings while separated from their parents.
Such children don’t have a right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of children without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according to Kids in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation.
A Tuesday deadline has been set for the government to reunite parents with children under 5, but the government wants an extension for some cases.
In Phoenix on Friday, the 1-year-old Honduran boy named Johan waited over an hour to see the judge. His attorney told Richardson that the boy’s father had brought him to the United States but they had been separated.
He said the father, who is now in Honduras, was removed from the country under false pretenses that he would be able to leave with his son.
For a while, the child wore shoes, but later he was in socks as he waited to see the judge. He was silent and calm for most of the hearing, though he cried for the few seconds that a worker handed him to another person while she gathered his diaper bag.
He is in the custody of the US Health and Human Services Department in Arizona.
Richardson said the boy’s case raised red flags over a court-ordered deadline to reunite young children with their families.
Richardson repeatedly told the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney who was acting as the prosecutor that he should make note of the cases involving young children because of the government’s obligation to meet the reunification deadline. The attorney said he wasn’t familiar with that deadline and that a different department within ICE handled such matters.
ICE spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said the attorney was familiar with the injunction but didn’t know the specifics of the timetable offhand ‘‘and did not want to misspeak.’’
In the end, Johan was granted a voluntary departure order that will allow the government to fly him to Honduras so that he can be reunited with his family. An attorney with the Florence Project, an Arizona-based nonprofit that provides free legal help to immigrants, said both his mother and father are in Honduras.
The family separation issue is especially urgent for the parents of young children who are even more dependent on their mothers and fathers. Studies show that major stress at a very young age can create a lifetime of emotional and even physical problems.
Honduran immigrant Christian Granados has been separated from his 5-year-old daughter Cristhy for more than a month after they were detained in El Paso, Texas, attempting to enter the United States.
She was taken to a holding facility in Chicago, while he was released pending an asylum request on June 24.
For some separated families, the reunion will occur in Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — the violence-plagued countries that many of them were fleeing.
Now this is just sick and outright WRONG
PHOENIX — The federal government is under a court order to reunite immigrant children with their families. But in the meantime, some children have had to appear in immigration courts without their parents for deportation proceedings.
A 1-year-old boy had a court appearance on Friday before an immigration judge in Phoenix. He drank milk from a bottle, played with a small purple ball, and occasionally asked for water before being called before the judge.
The immigration judge could hardly contain his unease with the situation during the portion of the hearing in which he asks immigrant defendants whether they understand the proceedings.
‘‘I’m embarrassed to ask it, because I don’t know who you would explain it to, unless you think that a 1-year-old could learn immigration law,’’ Judge John W. Richardson told the lawyer representing the boy.
The boy is one of hundreds of children who must be reunited with their parents after being separated at the border, many of them split from mothers and fathers as a result of the Trump administration’s ‘‘zero-tolerance policy.’’
The administration has asked for more time to reunite 101 children under 5 years old who were separated from their parents after crossing the border.
The original order set a deadline of Tuesday to reunite children under age 5 with their parents, and July 26 to reunite everyone else.
A federal judge in San Diego has scheduled a hearing for Monday on the request for a delay of some cases.
US District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Justice Department to share a list of the 101 children by Saturday with the American Civil Liberties Union, which successfully sued the administration to force the young children and families to be reunited.
Sabraw is hoping that by Monday, the two sides can agree on which of the children can be excused from the deadline while government officials seek more information on the parents’ claims.
Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian told the judge that the government is deploying significant resources to ensure that children are being reunited with parents quickly.
The family separations have become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks on end dominated the news in recent weeks.
Critics have also seized on the nation’s immigration court system that requires children — some still in diapers — to have appearances before judges and go through deportation proceedings while separated from their parents.
Such children don’t have a right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of children without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according to Kids in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation.
A Tuesday deadline has been set for the government to reunite parents with children under 5, but the government wants an extension for some cases.
In Phoenix on Friday, the 1-year-old Honduran boy named Johan waited over an hour to see the judge. His attorney told Richardson that the boy’s father had brought him to the United States but they had been separated.
He said the father, who is now in Honduras, was removed from the country under false pretenses that he would be able to leave with his son.
For a while, the child wore shoes, but later he was in socks as he waited to see the judge. He was silent and calm for most of the hearing, though he cried for the few seconds that a worker handed him to another person while she gathered his diaper bag.
He is in the custody of the US Health and Human Services Department in Arizona.
Richardson said the boy’s case raised red flags over a court-ordered deadline to reunite young children with their families.
Richardson repeatedly told the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney who was acting as the prosecutor that he should make note of the cases involving young children because of the government’s obligation to meet the reunification deadline. The attorney said he wasn’t familiar with that deadline and that a different department within ICE handled such matters.
ICE spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said the attorney was familiar with the injunction but didn’t know the specifics of the timetable offhand ‘‘and did not want to misspeak.’’
In the end, Johan was granted a voluntary departure order that will allow the government to fly him to Honduras so that he can be reunited with his family. An attorney with the Florence Project, an Arizona-based nonprofit that provides free legal help to immigrants, said both his mother and father are in Honduras.
The family separation issue is especially urgent for the parents of young children who are even more dependent on their mothers and fathers. Studies show that major stress at a very young age can create a lifetime of emotional and even physical problems.
Honduran immigrant Christian Granados has been separated from his 5-year-old daughter Cristhy for more than a month after they were detained in El Paso, Texas, attempting to enter the United States.
She was taken to a holding facility in Chicago, while he was released pending an asylum request on June 24.
For some separated families, the reunion will occur in Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador — the violence-plagued countries that many of them were fleeing.
Now this is just sick and outright WRONG
