“Mr.L”, the Congolese mom detained by the federal government despite having a credible asylum claim, has finally been released from a California jail following a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). But, there’s little for her to celebrate, because “S.S.”, the woman’s seven-year-old daughter, is still locked up alone, thousands of miles away in Illinois:
The ACLU, which sued on the woman’s behalf, said she was released from a detention center in San Diego on Tuesday night. She hasn’t been reunited with her daughter, who has been in the custody of federal child-welfare officials in Illinois.
“We are thrilled that the mother has been released and look forward to the government immediately reuniting her with her daughter,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the group’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “But there remain many other families who have been separated, and we will continue to attack this horrific family-separation practice.”
Mr. L had passed her initial asylum claim last year. But rather than detain them together (though families shouldn’t be at detention facilities period, where they can languish for months), officials ripped mother and daughter apart. “When the officers separated them,” the ACLU’s lawsuit stated, “Ms. L. could hear her daughter in the next room screaming that she did not want to be taken away from her mother.”
The ACLU sued earlier this month for their immediate release, or to at least have them detained together, but officials refused to budge. For their cruelty, officials should expect even more legal action: ”Immigrant advocates said the suit was the first of what would likely be many challenges to the Trump administration’s decision to separate some immigrant parents and children.” And to blame for this is Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. The Washington Post:
Immigrant families have been arriving at the border by the thousands since 2014, primarily due to violence in Central America. More than 260,000 such immigrants—mostly from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala—have been caught illegally crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. Most of them have sought asylum.
Since that first wave of families arrived, the federal government has tried to stem the flow with a variety of efforts. The Obama administration also opened a series of family detention centers to keep the immigrants jailed while their cases were decided.
A federal judge later ruled that a decades-old court settlement over the treatment of immigrant children barred the government from detaining such children with their parents. That prompted the Obama administration to release most of the families in the U.S. while they waited for their cases to be completed.
But under the Trump administration, “the cruel practice” of separating and detaining migrants and their children “has become increasingly common, immigrant advocacy groups say. In the nine months preceding February, government agents separated children from their parents 53 times, according to data compiled by the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.” The Washington Post Editorial Board:
Make no mistake: Ms. L and S.S. could have been placed together in a family detention center. There has been no explanation of why the determination was made to separate them; nor is there any allegation that Ms. L. is an unfit parent. The only principle at work, if it can be called that, is the idea that future asylum seekers might be deterred if they are convinced that the United States is actually a crueler and more heartless place than their native country.
Gratuitous malice toward children is not a characteristic one generally associates with the United States, but under Ms. Nielsen’s guidance, the Department of Homeland Security seems intent on changing that. A Homeland Security spokesman would not comment on this case but said that the department does not “currently” have a policy regarding separating asylum-seeking parents and children who are detained.
But the fact is that, at least in this case, the government already is carrying out the practice of separating parents and children. So where did the direction come from? Were they “rogue” agents? Did superiors direct them to do this? But then again, it’s John Kelly’s unleashed DHS that Nielsen inherited. “This is not a one-off case,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. “We are hearing there are dozens if not hundreds of cases around the country. And the Administration is threatening to do even more family separation.”