ACLU: 911 Children Split At Border Since 2018 Court Order

Speaker 1: 00:00 In the last year, 911 more immigrant children have been separated from their parents by authorities at the US. Mexico border. Federal Judge Dana Sobre in San Diego ordered the government to end most child separations in June, 2018 since that time, the HCLU says the practice has continued and often for only minor offenses and miscommunications with parents. Here's ACO, you attorney legal learnt, you know for every type of criminal offense the criminal justice system punishes you, but we don't take away your children for offenses like that. I mean, can you imagine how many Americans would lose their children if a traffic offense or a disorderly conduct or a misdemeanor theft defense was, was it basis for taking away your child? ACLU attorneys are now asking judges abroad to clarify when the government is allowed to separate children from their parents at the border. Joining me by Skype is Elliot's Bagot San Diego correspondent for the Associated Press and he's been covering this story. Elliot, welcome warding marine. We just heard from the ACLU attorney that there are a number of different reasons like traffic offenses, et Cetera, that are causing children to be separated from their parents at the border. What are the reasons that border agents are still giving for separating kids from their parents? Speaker 2: 01:22 Well, if these 911 children that were separated from June 26 2018 to June 29th of this year, uh, about two thirds, 678 to be exact, where for criminal criminal wrongdoing and it's very vague what those offenses are. Some of them are really minor. One of them, for example, was a, a damage to a property, uh, that that is valued at $5. Um, others, uh, you know, 300 of these 678 criminal violations were immigration violations. The rest were immigrations with some, some combination of, of a crime, but it's really unclear based on the filing. You know, what those crimes are. Again, some of them appear to be pretty minor, uh, there, uh, traffic offenses. In some cases there's DUI, there's other, other crimes that, that um, that, that seemed pretty surprising for. Is there a reason, reason to separate Speaker 1: 02:13 now judge Roz order was meant to stop immigrant family separations at the border except in limited instances. What were those instances? According to the judge's ruling? Speaker 2: 02:26 You know, I forget the exact wording, but what they, what they did basically it's the same as under Obama when a, when a parent has a serious criminal record, when there's doubt about whether the person is, is really the parent. When there's some question about child safety, it could be that the child is in danger of, of being ill or, or being harmed for some reason it's a little, there's a little bit of wiggle room in there, but uh, it has to be something serious. Speaker 1: 02:50 And what can you tell us about the children who've been separated from their parents, their ages and so forth? Speaker 2: 02:56 About half of them have more than half are under 10 years old. So that's a 481 children. And then at 20% 185 of them are under five years old. And then there were a number of a, there's a lot of anecdotal examples. This is a 218 page court filing. Uh, the, the most interesting part was this, this analysis that one of the ACL use data subspecialists did. And uh, there were a number of babies, two year olds, one years old, one year olds. Those, uh, examples of the, if those cases, Speaker 1: 03:28 how did the ACLU come to have this information? Speaker 2: 03:31 So there's really, you know, this is a long going case as your listeners know, there's really three buckets if you will, of three stages of the family separation. Uh, one was the, the we all know about was the 2,800, roughly 28 kids who were separated, uh, and in government custody as of June 26, 2018 when judge sobriety issued his order to generally help the practice, most of those kids, nearly all of them are reunified. Um, then we learned in July that there were, that this practice, unbeknownst to the public was happening way back and going back to July, 2017 and we still don't know how many kids were separated then. Um, the government, the, uh, internal government watchdog says it's in the thousands. Uh, so far as of last month, they had confirmed a 791, just shy of 800. Uh, and, and it's just, they're in the process of identifying them. Speaker 2: 04:24 At that point there was really no tracking systems, so a very, very inadequate tracking system. So it's really, a lot of them are probably back with their parents or, or with close relatives, but we just don't know. They haven't, you know, 800 had been identified, but there's more out there that they're chill trying to identify. And then there's this, this new group that we first learned about yesterday, the ones who are separated after judge surprise order of June, 2018. And you know, the, the, the, the government has been under court order to provide information to the ACU. They've been doing it every month. I think about 150 200 names a month, but this is really, this court filing. Yesterday was the first time we got, you know, a really, really in depth look at who these kids are, these 900 plus Speaker 1: 05:07 speaking about these new separations. Do we know details about where the separations took place at the San Diego Mexican border? Speaker 2: 05:16 I did not see any breakdown of that like that on that, on that level. But you know, it's safe to say that most of them occurred in Texas, in Rio Grande Valley and an El Paso just because that's where most of the of the of the people are crossing. But I'm sure that there were some in San Diego and some in Arizona and some in Calexico. Uh, they've been, there is a seat. We can get somewhat of a sense of where the kids have gone. About. A third of them were, uh, sent to Catholic charities of New York. The goes about 300, eight of the 991. The rest are, are just sent. There's a fair amount too, a in southern California in Chicago. I'll really all over the country. Speaker 1: 05:56 Now. The ACLU filed that motion in court yesterday asking to block the Trump administration from continuing family separations, or at least delineate those specifically those reasons why families can be separated, if at all. When might we hear more from Judge Sabra? Speaker 2: 06:17 You know, he's tended to move very quickly. We, they know this, this filing was just made yesterday. The ASLU asks for an in person hearing to discuss this, so we're all kind of just waiting to see what the judge, how the judge responds. I'm sure there'd probably be a, maybe who will ask the government to issue a, to, to file some kind of briefing and response. And then we'll have a hearing, maybe, I'm guessing was sometime over the next few weeks. Speaker 1: 06:40 I've been joined by Elliot [inaudible]. He's the San Diego correspondent for the Associated Press and Elliot, thank you very much. Thank you. Speaker 3: 06:55 [inaudible].