Department of Justice Asked to House “Up to 12,000” Immigrants While Families Are Reunited

On Wednesday, the Department of Justice stated that it has been tasked with housing “a population of up to 12,000 people,” as the Trump administration’s policy of detaining undocumented immigrants continues. The DOJ will reportedly have to house 2000 undocumented immigrants for a month and a half and then begin to expand its capacities.

The housing will be provided in military facilities located mainly in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. This housing effort is being completed in parallel to a court order which calls for undocumented children to be placed in locations near the U.S. border, although no specific locations have been stated. The DOJ has reportedly been asked to find a facility which has the capacity to house such a large group of people and, in the case that said facilities are not available, to build three different facilities that can house 4,000 immigrants each.

According to reports from Customs and Border Protection, over 2,300 children have been separated from their parents under the “zero tolerance policy,” and 2,047 children have yet to be reunited with their parents. Although President Trump’s recent executive order did stop family separations, the other aspects of the zero-tolerance policy are still being applied to any immigrant that enters the U.S. illegally.

Many parents are still unable to speak with their children, and many more still do not know their children’s locations. U.S. state officials are facing a similar state of confusion, as they were not initially provided with information about the children in their custody, such as their names, their ages, and their exact nationalities.

New York officials were not informed that children were being sent to their state for the last few months. This lack of efficient communication continued after the executive order’s signing, as they attempted to contact people from the federal government to gain information about the children and received no response. These officials’ situations demonstrate the rushed and reactive nature of President Trump’s decision.

The Department of Justice is also concerned about their ability to reunite families in a timely manner. Children cannot be kept in government facilities for more than twenty days and, as that is apparently too short of a time for the DOJ to effectively reunite said children with their families, they have asked for an extension. It was also requested that families be kept together while they wait for court rulings.

Funding for family housing, according to two unnamed White House officials, is still being figured out. The facilities will be staffed with Homeland Security officials, however more details have not been made public.

This request comes merely a day after a federal judge ruled that family separations must stop immediately, thereby passing Trump’s executive order. However, the judge did not shy away from demonstrating his concerns about the document’s specific measures. He was especially concerned about a statement which would allow for families to still be separated in the case that officials consider their detention together to pose a threat to a child’s welfare.

The judge’s ruling instructed immigration agents to stop separating families “without an objective finding that a parent is unfit,” to reunify all families within the next 30 days, and to create communication between parents and children via telephone within 10 days.  Said time is set to vary depending on the child’s age, since all children younger than 5 years old will be reunited within the next two weeks.

Featured Image via Flickr/cliff1066™