Judge orders separated families be reunited within 30 days
LOS ANGELES — A judge in California has ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days.
If the children are younger than 5, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order, issued Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego issued the order in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit involves a 7-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.
Sabraw also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit.
More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters. President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families and said parents and children will instead be detained together.
Mexico Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray says that his country’s government will propose a resolution before the Organization of American States on Friday condemning the United States’ policy of separating children from parents who have entered the country illegally.
The administration of President Donald Trump reversed course on that policy after outrage from opponents and his own party, but it is still working on how to reunite parents separated from their children.
In a statement Tuesday, Videgaray said he hoped that other countries in the region would support Mexico’s proposed resolution. It will also ask the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to institute protection measures if it sees fit.
It says Videgaray considers the policy “cruel, inhumane, unjustified and a violation of human rights.”
Videgaray says, “we’re worried about what is going to happen with the children that are still detained, in spite of being accompanied by their parents, and in general the situation of children not only Mexican, but also of other nationalities, who are subjected to a violation of their fundamental rights.”
