Deadline to reunite over 2,500 migrant kids with their families less than 2 weeks away

HARI SREENIVASAN:

This week, the Federal Government reunited 58 children under the age of 5 who were separated from their families at the Mexican border. Even though some of the reunions happened after last Tuesday's deadline, a judge overseeing the legal challenges to the Trump administration's immigration policies commended the government for their efforts. But he also cautioned that he'll be watching closely as the deadline to return more than 2,500 older children to their families approaches on July 26th.

Joining me now from El Paso, Texas is Julian Aguilar who reports on the border and immigration for the nonprofit Texas Tribune. First, give us an update. Where we at?

JULIAN AGUILAR:

Just like you described, I think now that the original deadline has passed for the 5 years and younger, what the government calls tender age children, I think there are two things playing out simultaneously — when they're going to, I guess, drop to that more than 100 original number… Like you mentioned there were about 58 that have been reunited and the government says well, there's others that have not because of various factors with respect to whether or not the person they came in with is actually their parents or whether those people pose a danger to these children…Sort of laying the groundwork for a potential slowdown or potential hurdles so people know what to expect coming up with the rest of these unaccompanied minors or separated children that have to be reunited in less than two weeks.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Well, how significant of a problem — the government goes out of its way to say, listen, we want to make sure that we're returning these children to their rightful family members…Has has that been a pretty significant problem in the past?

JULIAN AGUILAR:

Well there's a lot, there's been a lot of criticism about you know, how people are hyping this because you know, President Obama did the same thing — separating families. And although the Obama administration did, it was on a much smaller level. Now, to give the government credit you know, if even one child was inadvertently sent to a human smuggler, human traffickers, somebody that you know, in the future that this child harmed then all eyes will be on the government saying you know, you really shouldn't have done that.

So I think, the government, to be fair, is trying to be as cautious as they can but on the flip side of the coin, you have a lot of people saying well, the government is in this predicament because of the zero tolerance policy anyway that never needed to happen.

And what we've seen in El Paso, at least on Tuesday, just a few days back when the deadline for the 5 and younger children were there were three fathers that were reunited that evening. And Ruben Garcia, the director of the Annunciation House that received these families, said he could tell on the part of the federal government's side that there was an urgency to get this done as quickly as possible so they know there's a lot of eyes on him, they know they are under heavy criticism but at the same time as we saw on Friday with the press release saying everybody needs to slow down, take a breath because we need to make sure that these children and parents are really who they say they are. Again, I think that's kind of laying the groundwork for what's going to happen in the next two weeks.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Let's talk a little bit about those 2,500 kids. It seems in the government's communication, they [kind of] mentioned the word files — that there were files on all these children. I'm trying to figure out and in your reporting, what have you found is the amount of information that the government has on a per child basis?

JULIAN AGUILAR:

Well, the government says of course they know where every child is and who every child is because they're assigned a number, an alien number as are the parents. But what we've seen here on the ground is that it doesn't necessarily play out the same way for each family.

For example, last week there were several parents in El Paso that were reunited with their children. There was one gentleman from Honduras, a dad who got to see his daughter for an hour and then they were separated again because he had to submit a birth certificate and that happened a few days ago if not a week ago. And then now he had to make an appointment for fingerprints but meanwhile there were other parents that got there after he did that were had already been reunited. So it's really sort of a guessing game as to what's going to play out with each scenario.

And this example I gave with this Honduran gentleman, his daughter and he are both in El Paso, which I think is even more telling and even more frustrating for this gentleman because you have families that are hundreds of miles apart that have already been reunited and this gentleman is in the same city limits as his daughter and he's still having to jump through some hoops. I know that's one example but I've heard that that's occurring. You know, it's not just a singular instance where that's occurring across the country.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

You also followed a couple of different families who are trying to reunite and as you said sometimes once they get into the country, the child is hundreds of miles away. How did they get from one location to another?

JULIAN AGUILAR:

Well, you know, the government and they've said this for years, you know that it just depends on bed space. For example, the the tent facility, the camp here outside of El Paso, in El Paso County Tornillo Texas, they had to extend that contract because they still needed to keep the beds for these unaccompanied minors.

Say, somebody was apprehended in Santa Teresa, New Mexico which is here about El Paso or within El Paso, and their ultimate destination was New York or Chicago or Maryland, and they had an aunt or an uncle or a relative there, they would sometimes send the young child where they were closer to the sponsor, to this guardian and keep the parent detained where they were originally apprehended. Again, I think this is part of the frustration that it's sort of mix and match all over the country and which is sort of leading to this long amount of time for these folks to be reunited.

HARI SREENIVASAN:

Julian Aguilar of the Texas Tribune joining us from El Paso, thanks so much.

JULIAN AGUILAR:

Thanks for having me on.