Government policies that cause widespread separation of migrant children from their parents would be banned under a proposed legal settlement filed Monday by the Biden administration and the American Civil Liberties Union.

If the judge approves, the settlement will be submitted

after three years of negotiations

in the federal district court for the Southern District of California, would bar the federal government from prosecuting adults who enter the U.S. illegally to separate them from their children.

Under former President Trump’s so-called zero-tolerance policy, the administration regularly prosecuted and jailed migrant parents who crossed the border without permission

.

Because children could not go to jail with their parents while their parents awaited trial, federal officials placed the children in federal custody or with foster care. From May 5 to June 20, 2018, more than 3,000 children were forcibly separated from their parents, many of whom were ultimately deported.

The practice of separating families at the southwest border was an outrage, said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. This agreement will facilitate the reunification of separated families and provide them with essential services to assist in their recovery.

The ACLU said that under the proposed arrangement, people separated from their families would be eligible for legal entry and three-year, renewable work permits, as well as benefits for housing, health care and legal services. They would be able to apply for asylum regardless of previous denials and would not be subject to the usual one-year application deadline.

Future separations would be allowed

only

in cases of abuse or if the parent has committed serious crimes, the ACLU said. Divorces should also be documented in a database shared by government agencies, and family members’ attorneys should be quickly notified and allowed to contest the divorces.

Monday’s agreement expands the number of people currently covered by the lawsuit, about 3,900 children, by at least 500 to cover the full four years of the Trump administration, the ACLU said. Also included are adults who can prove they were the child’s legal guardian, as well as non-citizen parents who were separated from their U.S. citizen children.

The agreement creates an appeals process for hundreds of previous families

lie

excluded from the class because parents had committed minor crimes, were wrongly accused of child abuse or were claimed not to be the child’s real parent, according to the ACLU.

About 700 families have been reunited since Trump left office, but Gelernt believes 500 families have been reunited

Unpleasant

1,000 children remain separated from their parents. At least 200 children under the age of five were separated from their parents; the youngest was six months old, he said.

Lawyers said they have not found the families of about 75 children, despite years of searching. In other cases, families with whom they had previously been in contact have moved, changed phone numbers or gone into hiding.

moved down

In my 30 years of doing this work, family separation policies were by far the worst I’ve ever seen, says Lee Gelernt, chief counsel for the ACLU, which has filed a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government over the separations. Nothing can ever erase what the Trump administration deliberately did to these little children, but this settlement is a crucial step forward, prohibiting future administrations from engaging in this brutality and giving parents the right to reunite with their children and the possibility of remaining in prison. United States.

The Biden administration previously held settlement talks after the Wall Street Journal reported that officials had considered paying each person separated from their family $450,000. The government has since settled a handful of individual cases for smaller amounts, Gelernt said, while others are still pending.

The Biden administration has repeatedly criticized Trump-era policies and launched a task force in 2021 to help reunite families separated at the border.

A 2021 report from the Justice Department’s inspector general criticized the administration’s handling of the families, concluding that “the department’s singular focus on increasing immigration prosecutions came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of family unit prosecutions and child separations. .”

Last month, an independent federal court said Border Patrol agents had separated migrant children, some as young as 8 years old, from their parents for several days to prevent overcrowding at a Texas shelter. The separated children were held in areas typically reserved for unaccompanied children, with most unaware of “protocols that would allow them to request visits with their parents,” says Dr. Paul Wise, a pediatrician, wrote in the 71-page report.

Concerns wisely expressed

S

that the children faced significant emotional distress related to the separation, but emphasized that the separations were different from those under the Trump administration because the families were reunited after their release.

Earlier this year, Trump was asked whether he might bring back the family separation policy.

If you have that policy, people won’t come. When a family hears they are going to be separated, they love their family and they don’t come, he said in a CNN town hall.

The ACLU has asked the court to enforce the settlement. Gelernt said that under the agreement reached with the federal government, the court would have jurisdiction for six years to enforce provisions on Tump-era divorces and eight years to enforce provisions on future divorces.

Gelernt said the ACLU is prepared to file a new lawsuit after eight years if necessary.

The federal government has also agreed to continue funding a family reunification process and to keep the ACLU informed when it discovers information that could help reunite families, the group’s lawyers said.

People who believe they are class members can file claims through the website

together.gov

.