A federal judge instituted an eight-year ban on the separation of unlawful migrant families at the border that would preemptively block a previous policy of former President Donald Trump’s if he were to be re-elected.
The decision on Friday stems from a years-long lawsuit between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) over the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy that prosecuted all unlawful migrants who crossed the border with no exception made for asylum seekers or those with young children.
As previously reported by The Dallas Express, border patrol agents have been logging record-high encounters with unlawful migrants in recent years, prompting tensions between the federal government and Texas over what measures can be taken to secure the border.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, approved a settlement between the DOJ and ACLU that covers roughly 4,500 to 5,000 families, according to a press release from the ACLU.
The settlement, which was first announced in October, states that the federal government will continue to reunite families and provide resources to help them get on their feet while barring the government from reenacting the zero-tolerance policy for eight years.
Sabraw stated shortly before approving the settlement that the separation of families “represents one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country,” as reported by the Associated Press.
The judge also pointed out how there are still 68 children who are unaccounted for, saying that it was his “greatest fear and concern.”
In court on Friday, Sabraw read a line from one of his previous rulings in 2018, which stated that the separation process is “brutal, offensive and fails to comply with traditional notions of fair play and decency,” per AP News.
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the approved settlement is “a critical step toward closing one of the darkest chapters of the Trump administration.”
“Babies and toddlers were literally ripped from their parents’ arms under this horrific practice. Thousands of families were torn apart,” claimed Gelernt in the ACLU press release.
“While this settlement alone can’t fix the unfathomable damage done to these children, it does provide hope and support that didn’t exist before. But there remains enormous work ahead to implement this settlement, including reuniting the hundreds of children who are still separated from their loved ones after all these years.”
Sabaw previously ordered the family separations be halted in 2018 with a nationwide injunction, just days after Trump paused them.
A report from the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in 2019 stated that 2,648 children were separated from their families, and the “list largely covers children who were separated after the Administration initiated its ‘zero tolerance policy’ in April 2018 and were still in custody as of June 26, 2018.”
The list from the committee did not include information about children who were separated before April 2018, reunited with their families before June 2018, or about more than 700 children who were separated since 2018.
This report continues to state that the “Trump Administration’s child separations were more harmful, traumatic, and chaotic than previously known.”
The committee specified these claims and stated that at least 241 separated children were kept in Customs and Border Patrol facilities for longer than the legally permitted 72 hours, while at least 679 children were held in government custody between 46 to 75 days.
