Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is asking for two years to identify several thousand migrant children who were stolen from their parents at the Mexican border under Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.
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The Associated Press reported that the Trump administration has set forth their proposed timeline in a new court filing.
Trump’s people are now saying that it will take longer than they had expected to review an estimated 47,000 cases of unaccompanied children taken into U.S. custody between July 2017 and June 25, 2018.
The process is somewhat time consuming because the government, after kidnapping the children, did not keep good records. In some cases they can’t even determine which children in custody were separated from their parents.
Trump was forced to stop his practice of stealing children from families at the border last June after a federal judge ruled against him. The ruling came after months of international outrage at the cruel family separation practice which had been put into place by then-attorney general Jeff Sessions.
The judge, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, said that he can legally hold the Trump administration accountable for those children who were separated before his June 2018 order.
According to the AP report, the federal government is just now starting to identify the thousands of children who were taken from their families. Government officials are saying that the identification and reunification process is very difficult because so much time has passed.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued last year to halt the practice of separating families. They criticized the DOJ’s proposed two-year timeline yesterday.
“We strongly oppose a plan that could take up to two years to locate these families,” the ACLU’s lead attorney, Lee Gelernt, said. “The government needs to make this a priority.”
There Is No Excuse For Trump’s Abuse of Migrant Children
Ever since Donald Trump put into place his Zero Tolerance policy, migrant children have been abused. Tens of thousands of children were kidnapped, causing trauma that will be with them their entire lives.
And many of these children can’t be located, due to faulty recordkeeping by Trump’s immigration enforcement people. Many children have been abused in migrant shelters, kept in cages, while they have waited months to see their parents again.
Donald Trump is a complete failure when it comes to immigration. Every step he has taken reveals that he is motivated by cruelty and has no comprehensive immigration program.
I am a lifelong Democrat with a passion for social justice and progressive issues. I have degrees in writing, economics and law from the University of Iowa.
