Homeland Security Finally Releases Plan to Reunite Immigrant Children With Their Parents

After an initial state of confusion and crisis for U.S. officials all across the country, the Department of Homeland Security has released a plan to reunite immigrant children with their parents.

This plan follows the separation of thousands of immigrant families under Trump Administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

Although the plan has been published, neither a timeline nor a due date for the plan to be completed has been released.

Many officials previously struggled to identify separated children after the President’s recent executive order was implemented, in part because they didn’t know how many children had been sent to each state.

Released alongside the Department of Homeland Security’s plan was the precise number of children currently being held in government facilities, which is 2,053.

According to the Department’s release, 522 children have already been reunited with their parents. Reuniting the rest of said children with their parents will involve a collaboration between Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement,  Homeland Security, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement instructed parents held in facilities who are looking for their children to call a certain phone number. This has not proven itself to be an effective measure, as most parents’ calls have been unable to go through. In addition, parents have not been permitted to make phone calls from the facilities where they are currently being detained.

It has been reported that several of the separated families initially came to America requesting asylum, and are still applying for it. The process of applying for asylum is long and can take several months for an individual to be approved. How or if applicants for asylum will be helped in the meanwhile is still unclear.

The Department of Homeland Security’s announcement comes directly after a series of tweets by President Donald Trump, wherein he argued for illegal immigrants to be deported without any prosecution or process of trial, going as far as to call them “intruders.”

He stated:

“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country. When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”

Many specialists and politicians have stated that Trump’s ideas regarding immigration are illegal, as immigrants have the right to be processed.

These tweets only add to the series of illegal actions President Trump has advocated for, as his latest executive order was deemed to be illegal and is up for rejection from the Court. The children who are now under U.S. custody have to be cared for and placed in safe environments, which would not be the case if these children are reunited with their families in detention facilities. This legal struggle is similar to the one President Barack Obama had to face during his second term due to a similarly high influx of immigrants.

All actions related to this series of events have received similar amounts of controversy. The previous legislation which caused families to be separated was met with immediate bipartisan backlash, with essentially no one but the Trump administration supporting the decision. The arguments made by several White House officials in defense of the measure stated that the children’s parents were responsible for having brought their children to the country illegally and stated that the U.S. was only enforcing the law. Some White House officials argued that the future changes in legislation relied entirely on Congress and Democrats caused similar outrage, as these statements were proven to be completely false.

After several tense days, the President decided to sign the executive order which, aside from possibly being illegal, apparently attempted to improve the situation by detaining entire families together, which could be considered as highly immoral as well.

The lack of coordination between the federal government and state officials in charge of the separated children has raised a great deal of controversy as well. This lack of coordination proved that the President’s decision was made without any previous announcements or preparation and did not include enough details for the families to be properly and efficiently reunited.

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