Trump administration wants two years to reunite children with parents after forced Mexico border separations
- There were 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children taken into government custody after Trump ordered families separated in 2017-2018, White House says
- The Trump administration says it could take up to two years to find all the children, many of whom are no longer in government custody
The Trump administration wants up to two years to find potentially thousands of children who were separated from their families at the border before a judge halted the practice last year, a task that it says is more laborious than previous efforts because the children are no longer in government custody.
The Justice Department said in a court filing late Friday that it will take at least a year to review about 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children taken into government custody between July 1, 2017 and June 25, 2018 – the day before US District Judge Dana Sabraw halted the general practice of splitting families.
The administration would begin by sifting through names for traits most likely to signal separation – for example, children under 5.
The administration would provide information on separated families on a rolling basis to the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families and criticised the proposed timeline on Saturday.
“We strongly oppose a plan that could take up to two years to locate these families,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney. “The government needs to make this a priority.”