Lawyers tasked with locating immigrant families who were separated by the Trump administration say they are unable to reach out to the parents of 545 children in an effort that has been thwarted by the coronavirus pandemic, according to a court-registered court on Tuesday. .
"People keep asking me when we will find all the families, and I unfortunately do not know," Lee Gelernt, chief attorney and deputy director of the ACLU Immigrant Rights Project, told BuzzFeed News.
* ACLU - American Civil Liberties Union (American Civil Liberties Union)
"Every child has their own story and that is why we can not stop looking until we find every family!"
In 2018, the Trump administration systematically separated thousands of children from their parents under what was called the “zero tolerance policy” in which parents were sent to federal jail before going to court on charges of entering the U.S. without authorization.
Because the children could not be sent to federal prison with their parents, the government separated them, listed them as unaccompanied minors, and transferred them to the custody of the Refugee Resettlement Office.
Wednesday's report stems from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in February 2018 on behalf of a Congolese asylum seeker identified as Ms. L, who was separated from her 7-year-old daughter by U.S. immigration authorities .
The mother and daughter were reunited, but the issue escalated into a class lawsuit involving thousands of immigrant families separated by the U.S. government.
Following the revelation last year that the Trump administration had indeed separated families as early as the summer of 2017 as part of a pilot program, the research expanded to include 1,030 more children, who had been separated from their parents since July 1 2017.
As of Tuesday, a committee of legal and non-profit firms that ACLU set up to find separated families has tried to reach the parents of all extended class members, successfully reaching contact with 485 of the children's parents, the report notes.
Of the parents the committee has not been able to reach, ACLU believes approximately two-thirds have already been deported to their home countries.
Gelernt described the situation as "extremely sad", adding that some of the children, who already live in the US with foster families or a relative, were babies when they were separated for three years and spent part of their lives , separated from their parents.
The report stated that while field efforts were suspended due to the pandemic, they are already starting again.
