California battles Trump on border kids
Lawsuit: State sues over separation of undocumented children, families
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration Tuesday over its separation of undocumented immigrant children from their parents, as state officials confirmed that about 50 separated children, including two in Pleasant Hill, are living in state-licensed care homes.
Becerra and attorneys general from 16 other states took aim at the administration’s launch in early May of a “zerotolerance” policy for people who illegally cross the southern border into the U.S. The move sent immigrants to criminal court and jailed them, prompting more than 2,300 children to be separated from
their parents.
California and the other states allege, among other things, that the federal policy violates the due-process rights of the parents and the equalprotection rights of both children and parents. The attorneys are asking for the court to stop the administration from separating any children from their parents and to quickly reunite children with their parents, among other requests.
“Today we are taking the Trump administration to court because the safety, security and well-being of our children is too important to be threatened by a heartless political maneuver,” Becerra said. “Not only does the Trump administration’s policy impact the health and safety of these separated families, it also threatens California’s ability to ensure our residents’ rights and health are protected.”
In recent days, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have said that they have stopped referring immigrants with children to prosecutors for crossing the border illegally.
Officials also have said that they are aiming to reunify children with their parents, though they have explained that without a law passed by Congress allowing for children and parents to be held together for more than three weeks, which is currently blocked by a court order, children will be reunited with their parents once their immigration case has wrapped up.
On Monday, at a rally in South Carolina, Trump said, “And we want to tell people, ‘I’m sorry you’re coming in to the country illegally. We don’t want you in the country. That’s it. It’s now over.’ ”
The suit came as California revealed some limited details about separated children now in the state. Michael Weston, deputy director of public affairs and outreach programs for the California Department of Social Services, said the federal government had not handed over “complete information” on the number and placement of the children.
Still, he said, state officials re-inspected licensed group homes and foster agencies that have contracts with the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the branch of the U.S. government responsible for the separated children, and found that “there are approximately 50 separated children living in 17 state-licensed homes at this time.”
State officers examined the facilities and spoke with children, staff and foster parents, finding no immediate health or safety concerns, Weston said.
An official with Southwest Key, a nonprofit that operates shelters for unaccompanied children across the country, told Martin Nelis, a spokesman for Pleasant Hill, in an email that its facility in the city has two “adolescent girls” who were separated from their immigrant parents and that they were working “diligently” to reunite them with their parents. The facility is licensed by the state and was inspected Saturday, according to the email sent to Nelis.