SAN DIEGO (CN) — The Biden administration agreed to not reenact the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance policy” of separating children from their parents suspected of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally under the terms of a settlement of a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of immigrant parents and their children.
Monday's settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, if finalized by a federal judge, will not only make it more difficult for future administrations to reenact Trump’s family separation policy, but it will also fund efforts to reunite some 4,500 to 5,000 children separated by the policy with their parents in the U.S. The settlement also calls for a pathway for asylum in the U.S. and benefits for people affected by the policy, like work authorization, housing, and legal and medical services.
Some of these benefits outlined in the settlement were already made available to separated families through a task force created to reunite families under the Biden administration, but the proposed settlement goes a step beyond the purview of the task force by offering asylum assistance and barring future family separations, and making the task force itself binding.
Former President Donald Trump, now the front runner candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, refused to rule out the possibility of reinstating the family separation policy in a CNN Town Hall event earlier this year.
“The ACLU has settled hundreds of lawsuits in our 103-year history, but none more important than this one. To America’s enduring shame, we tore children from the arms of their families to enact a xenophobic agenda. This settlement closes the darkest chapter of the Trump administration, but as welcomed as it is, the damage inflicted on these families will forever be tragic and irreversible,” wrote Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a press release.
The policy was enacted by the Trump administration in 2018 to deter people from illegally immigrating across the U.S.-Mexico border. The policy led to parents suspected of crossing the border illegally to be deported, while their children were kept in federal custody, or sent to live with sponsor families, or in foster care facilities within the United States. Even some people who applied for asylum legally at the border were subject to being separated from their families
After images of children held in cages and audio of children in federal custody crying inconsolably, begging for their parents, went public, growing public condemnation, protests, and political and legal pressure forced the Trump administration to sign an executive order to stop the program in the summer of 2018. Then U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, a George W. Bush appointee, issued a nationwide injunction and ordered the federal government to reunite all of the children separated by the policy within 30 days.
Since that ruling, the federal government has asked for more time to find parents of children separated at the border because of poor record-keeping and a lack of a reliable system of maintaining contact information with the children’s parents.
Thousands of children have been reunited with their parents by non-governmental, charity and activist organizations. The ACLU estimates that 1,000 families remain separated.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2018 on behalf of a Congolese mother and her six-year-old daughter who had been separated at the border by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE sent the mother and daughter to detention sites thousands of miles apart, without providing any meaningful contact for months.
“When we brought this lawsuit, no one thought it would involve thousands of children, take us to so many countries searching for families, or last for years. While no one would ever claim that this settlement can wholly fix the harm intentionally caused to these little children, it is an essential beginning. This settlement provides significant benefits to thousands of families, and an indispensable component bars the government from reenacting the zero-tolerance policy in the future,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney in the lawsuit, in a statement.
In a statement announcing the settlement, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the Trump policy "shameful."
“The practice of separating families at the southwest border was shameful,” Garland said. “This agreement will facilitate the reunification of separated families and provide them with critical services to aid in their recovery.
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