At the beginning of the week, on Monday, President Trump took credit for reuniting families (a problem caused by his administration) saying in a tweet, “A highly respected Federal judge today stated that the ‘Trump Administration gets great credit’ for reuniting illegal families.”
But Trump’s work in bringing families back together is far from over. In fact, many families are not only still separated, but some parents have been deported without the government ever making a record of consent to leave their children behind.
On Thursday, however, the administration argued that it isn’t responsible for locating deported parents who were forcibly separated from their children when entering the U.S. based on a zero tolerance policy on illegal immigration.
Instead of cleaning up its own mess, the government would like to pass that burden to the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing separated families, the plaintiffs, in a class action lawsuit.
The DOJ filing reads, “Plaintiffs’ counsel should use their considerable resource and their network of law firms NGO’s, volunteers, and others, together with the information that defendants have provided (or will soon provide), to establish contact with possible class members in foreign countries.”
Earlier in the week, on Tuesday, during a hearing with Cmdr. Jonathan White of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the scope of the problem was made clear. According to his testimony, the parents of more than 500 children separated from their families are no longer in the U.S.
Making matters worse, the government also seems to have no address on file for some of the parents they deported, based on court filings, complicating the already difficult process of tracing down parents abroad.
From implementing a policy of family separations, to deporting parents with no documentation of consent to leave their children in a foreign country, to failing to keep records on where those parents might be found, the Trump administration has created a mess.
The onus of bringing families back together, as ordered by a federal judge, is their burden and their burden alone. Trump and his administration should be grateful for the offer of the ACLU to help with that process rather than attempting to shrug off responsibility.
After all, as both House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warned, family separations have proven to be a big issue for the administration. That issue won’t go away unless children are reunited with their parents as soon as possible.
