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PHOENIX
— The 1-year-old boy in a green button-up shirt drank milk from a bottle,
played with a small purple ball that lit up when it hit the ground and
occasionally asked for "agua."
Then it
was the child's turn for his court appearance before a Phoenix immigration
judge, who could hardly contain his unease with the situation during the
portion of the hearing where he asks immigrant defendants whether they
understand the proceedings.
"I'm
embarrassed to ask it, because I don't know who you would explain it to, unless
you think that a 1-year-old could learn immigration law," Judge John W.
Richardson told the lawyer representing the 1-year-old boy.
The boy
is one of hundreds of children who need to be reunited with their parents after
being separated at the border, many of them split from mothers and fathers as a
result of the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance policy." The
separations have become an embarrassment to the administration as stories of
crying children separated from mothers and kept apart for weeks on end
dominated the news in recent weeks.
Critics
have also seized on the nation's immigration court system that requires
children — some still in diapers — to have appearances before judges and go
through deportation proceedings while separated from their parents. Such
children don't have a right to a court-appointed attorney, and 90 percent of
kids without a lawyer are returned to their home countries, according to Kids
in Need of Defense, a group that provides legal representation.
In
Phoenix on Friday, the Honduran boy named Johan waited over an hour to see the
judge. His attorney told Richardson that the boy's father had brought him to the
U.S. but that they had been separated, although it's unclear when. He said the
father, who was now in Honduras, was removed from the country under false
pretenses that he would be able to leave with his son.
For a
while, the child wore dress shoes, but later he was in just socks as he waited
to see the judge. He was silent and calm for most of the hearing, though he
cried hysterically afterward for the few seconds that a worker handed him to
another person while she gathered his diaper bag. He is in the custody of the
U.S. Health and Human Services Department in Arizona.
Richardson
said the boy's case raised red flags over a looming court-ordered deadline to
reunite small children with their families. A federal judge in San Diego gave
the agency until next Tuesday to reunite kids under 5 with their parents and
until July 26 for all others.
Richardson
repeatedly told the Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorney who was acting
as the prosecutor that he should make note of the cases involving young children
because of the government's obligation to meet the reunification deadline. The
attorney said he wasn't familiar with that deadline and that a different
department within ICE handled such matters.
ICE
spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea said the attorney was familiar with the injunction
but didn't know the specifics of the timeline requirements off the top of his
head "and did not want to misspeak about any timeline commitments without
that knowledge."
The
agency's Enforcement and Removal Operations is leading the review of cases who
are a part of the class impacted by the judge's order, while the rest of the
agency is supporting them in the effort to complete it in as efficient and
accurate a manner possible.
In the
end, Johan was granted a voluntary departure order that would allow the
government to fly him to Honduras so that he could be reunited with his family.
An attorney with the Florence Project, an Arizona-based nonprofit that provides
free legal help to immigrants, said both his mother and father were in Honduras.
The
boy's case was heard on the same day that the Trump administration said it
needed more time to reunite 101 children under 5 years old to ensure the
children's safety and to confirm their parental relationships. The two sides
had a hearing on the matter Friday in San Diego and will determine over the
weekend which cases merit a delay. Justice Department attorney Sarah Fabian
stressed to the judge that the government is deploying significant resources to
ensure that children are being reunited with parents in timely fashion.
Around
the same time as the San Diego hearing, other kids who had been separated from
their parents made their way to court in Phoenix.
A boy
from Guatemala dressed in a vest and tie was asked by the judge how old he was,
and the child simply put five fingers up.
His
attorney said his father had brought him to the country and had been returned
two weeks ago to their home in Guatemala. He asked for a voluntary departure to
be issued for the boy.
"What
do you think about going back to Guatemala?" Richardson asked the boy.
The
family separation issue is especially urgent for the parents of young children
who are even more dependent on their mothers and fathers. Studies show that
major stress at a very young age can create a lifetime of emotional and even
physical problems.
Honduran
immigrant Christian Granados has been separated from his 5-year-old daughter
Cristhy for more than a month after they were detained in El Paso, Texas,
attempting to enter the U.S.
She was
taken to a holding facility in Chicago, while he was released pending an asylum
request on June 24.
He has
been in the midst of one bureaucratic hassle after another in trying to get his
daughter back, responding to intermittent requests for identification documents
and biographical information from government social workers who are attending
to his daughter.
Granados
sought out a suitable home to help reclaim his child by moving in with
relatives in Fort Mill, S.C. — but now fears he won't be able to afford airfare
for his girl to be reunited with him. He said authorities requested $1,250 to
fly her from Chicago.
"I
haven't felt the happiness I should feel with being here in the United
States," said Granados. "Happiness is when I have my daughter with
me."
For
some separated families, the reunion will occur in Guatemala, Honduras or El
Salvador — the violence-plagued countries that many of them were fleeing.
A
7-year-old girl in a pink bow and dress sat patiently on a wooden bench for
over an hour before Richardson called her. The girl had come to the U.S. from
Guatemala with her dad and had also been separated. The father was now back in
Guatemala.
Richardson
again told the ICE attorney to mark her case with a red flag to ensure the
government reunites her with her family in time.
He
asked the girl whether she wanted to go back to Guatemala and she had a fear of
getting hurt there. The girl said she wasn't afraid to go home, and Richardson
granted her a voluntary departure. He asked her if she had ever been on a
plane. When the girl nodded that she hadn't, Richardson said she was in for an
experience.
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