MCALLEN, Texas _ U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said Monday that he has directed the agency to temporarily stop referring parents for prosecution in federal criminal court when they are caught crossing the border illegally with their children.
McAleenan, speaking to reporters in Texas, said he made the decision hours after President Donald Trump's executive order was issued last week, calling for an end to the practice of separating families.
The commissioner stressed that the administration's "zero tolerance" policy remained in effect, and that parents would still be separated from their children and charged if they had a criminal history, posed a safety threat or there were concerns for the child's safety.
He said 538 children have been reunited with parents and that none of the families awaiting reunification were in Border Patrol custody.
"We're not prosecuting those parents," McAleenan said, "because of guidance in the (executive order) to maintain family unity."
As federal agencies struggle to balance the demands of "zero tolerance" with the president's order to keep families together, advocates for immigrants say that parents separated from their children and detained are being given a choice: If they want to see their children, they must withdraw their asylum claims and agree to be deported.
"They went in and told the parents if you sign this, you can get your kids back," said Jodi Goodwin, an attorney coordinating a "rapid response team" of about 10 volunteer lawyers aiding immigrants at Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas' Rio Grande Valley.
Goodwin said none of their clients signed, but the facility houses several hundred immigrants, and she can't be sure what the others did.
Since the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy started in April, 2,053 children have been separated from their parents.
On Monday, as McAleenan visited border facilities where families were being held, lawyers demanded that the government pick up the pace of reunifications.
Many of the mostly Central American parents fled gang violence or domestic abuse and came to the United States seeking asylum. They usually plead guilty to entering the country illegally in federal criminal court and are transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers such as Port Isabel to await deportation while their children are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours, placed in shelters or federal foster care across the country.
ICE is tracking separated family members and reuniting them before their deportation, according to a statement issued over the weekend by Homeland Security and HHS. Parents will begin receiving more information about the whereabouts of their children and telephone operators will provide more frequent communication, the statement said.
"There will be a small number of children who were separated for reasons other than zero tolerance that will remain separated," it said. "Generally only if the familial relationship cannot be confirmed, we believe the adult is a threat to the safety of the child, or the adult is a criminal alien."
But at the Port Isabel detention center Monday, Goodwin said none of her clients had been reunited with their children and only about one quarter had spoken with their children by phone. The Central American parents told lawyers they had been separated from children as young as 18 months. One child was deaf. Others suffered chronic illnesses such as asthma.
Goodwin said it wasn't clear from the government's weekend statement how children would be reunified with detained parents, since facilities such as Port Isabel, although designated as a "reunification center," are not designed to house children. She said detained parents should be a priority for reunification and that the government should release them to speed the process.
"It's disingenuous for the government to say they've had a plan all along, because they didn't and they wouldn't have let someone sit in there for two weeks without talking to their kid," Goodwin said. "It's something they're scrambling to develop right now."
After visiting Port Isabel on Sunday, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she'd seen no evidence of family reunifications. She said she spoke with nine women. "In every case, they were lied to," she said. "In every case, save one, they have not spoken with their children. And in every case, they do not know where their children are."
In El Paso, 32 immigrant parents who had been separated from their children were released Sunday after U.S. Customs and Border Protection withdrew federal criminal charges against them. The parents must still appear in immigration court.
But it wasn't clear when, or how, the families would be reunited.
Ruben Garcia, founder of the Annunciation House shelter where the families were staying, said when they call a hotline for Health and Human Services, which has custody of the children, they are promised a response in five days.
"They were all released with just the phone number. The firewall with HHS is really strong. I'm not sure even ICE can get through," Garcia said.
Advocates were also trying Monday to prevent parents from being deported without their children. Lawyers Ruby Powers and Cynthia Milian were helping a 24-year-old Honduran father detained near Houston and due to be deported soon without his 6-year-old daughter, who has asthma and was being held in a shelter in Arizona, the lawyers said. The pair were separated after they crossed the border illegally last month, fleeing Honduras after the man's cousin was killed.
The man was not allowed to speak to his daughter for three weeks _ and then only after he signed paperwork agreeing to be deported, Milian said. The attorneys are trying to rescind that deportation order this week.
"What they're telling them now is if they sign a voluntary departure order, they're going to meet their child at the airport," Milian said of immigrant parents separated from their children. "People are forgoing their asylum claim just to be with their child."
