The Justice Department (DOJ) reached a settlement agreement in a border separation case. The agreement prohibits the federal government from separating migrant families crossing the border for eight years. Families can only be separated if the parents are considered a danger to their children or the public.
The settlement will allow children to see their parents after years of separation. It will also permit families to seek permanent status in the U.S. through a special asylum process.
The settlement limits the cases in which federal officials can separate families in immigration proceedings. U.S. border officials would no longer be allowed to use parents’ illegal entry into the country as a basis to separate them from their children. Separations of migrant families would be limited to rare cases, such as those involving:
- Abusive parents
- Parents with serious criminal records
The settlement was negotiated by the Justice Department. It will be approved by the judge overseeing the case.
Under Trump’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, border officials separated at least 2,800 children from their parents, according to government data. Officials later found that more than 1,000 children had been separated from their families before Trump’s policy went into effect in 2018.
The policy was widely criticized on both sides of the aisle and spurred protests across the United States.
Trump spoke glowingly of his administration’s family separation policy and suggested it could return. “When you say to a family that if you come, we’re going to break you up, they don’t come,” he said.
Monday’s filing stems from the Ms. L et al. v. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al. case, which was initially prompted by the separation of a Congolese woman and her 7-year-old daughter. The American Civil Liberties Union originally filed the case, and it was later expanded to become a class-action lawsuit.
Under the settlement, the federal government will allow those who were separated under Trump to apply for parole and work permits; receive housing, medical and behavioral health benefits; and have access to legal services, as well as a special asylum process.
The current class is roughly 4,000 children, and the settlement applies to both parents and children.
“This settlement is huge a step forward for the families that were so cruelly separated years ago,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case “It will allow them to reunify and to seek status in the US. Critically, it will also prohibit such a cruel policy in the future. Whatever one thinks about border policy generally, this country must never again enact a policy that rips away little children.”
Days after President Joe Biden took office, he signed an executive order creating a task force of federal agencies to identify and reunite families who had been separated at the US-Mexico border under the Trump administration. It’s housed in the Department of Homeland Security.
Officials said Monday that the task force has searched through thousands of government records to identify separated families and has reunited more than 750 children with their families and identified 85 additional children who are in the process of being reunited with their families. The task force has also identified more than 290 US citizen children who were separated from their parents, officials said.
“The practice of separating families at the southwest border was shameful,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Monday. “This agreement will facilitate the reunification of separated families and provide them with critical services to aid in their recovery.”
