Senate Democrats Unveil Bill to Reunite Immigrant Families 'Immediately'

By Lauren Gambino, Guardian UK

18 July 18

Senators say measure would return 2,600 children to their parents as it seeks to overcome hurdles to reunification process

emocratic senators on Tuesday unveiled a new family reunification bill that they said would “immediately” reunite the 2,600 immigrant children still separated from their parents as a result of the White House’s zero-tolerance enforcement policy.

The measure would “ensure that never again will the United States government have the ability or the power to separate children from their parents in the way that has been done”, Senator Kamala Harris, a sponsor of the bill, said at a press conference.

Harris introduced the bill alongside senators Jeff Merkley, of Oregon, and Catherine Cortez Masto, of Nevada. The senators said their visits to detention facilities along the border helped inform the legislation.

“Three weeks ago, I traveled to the US-Mexico border in an attempt to gain access to the facilities where the Trump administration is holding immigrant children. While I was prohibited from entering these child-detention facilities, I did have the opportunity to speak to detained immigrant parents,” said Cortez Masto. “I promised them that I would do everything in my power to reunite them with their children. I’m introducing this bill to make good on that promise.”

Under extraordinary public backlash, Donald Trump reversed his administration’s policy and halted family separations. But federal agencies have struggled to reunite families, a process that has become increasingly difficult as parents are deported.

Last month a judge gave the Trump administration a 10 July deadline to reunite all children under five with their parents. The administration missed that deadline but said last week that it had reunified all eligible young children. Still, nearly half of the 103 young children remain separated from their parents because the parents have been deported, because of established safety concerns or a for handful of other reasons.

The administration faces a 26 July deadline to reunite the older children who remain in the government’s care. A federal judge has temporarily halted deportations of reunited migrant families to allow time for the court to consider the impact on the child’s right to seek asylum.

The Democrats’ bill would codify some of what has been ordered by courts but would go further to address some of the challenges to reunifications, which included parents not being able to afford the cost of transportation to bring their children back to them and a lack of coordination between agencies.

Among other things, the bill would:

• Require the departments of homeland security and health and human services to publish guidance on how they plan to reunify families
• Allow for the release of parents of separated children so that the reunifications do not happen in detention
• Ensure children have access to legal counsel
• Restore a case management program for asylum seekers that was ended last year
• Establish a presumption that parents are not deported until their child’s immigration proceeding is complete
• Protect privacy around the use of DNA testing

Congress has so far failed to pass any immigration reform measures despite bipartisan opposition to Trump’s family separation policy. California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a Republican, have been working on a measure that would limit family separation but those negotiations are ongoing.

“We of course welcome eagerly a bipartisan effort to fix what is obviously wrong with the administration’s policy. This is meant to address a component of it,” Harris said. “We do need a comprehensive approach.”