Trump Administration: ACLU Should Take Lead in Reuniting Migrant Families

The Trump administration told a court Thursday that the American Civil Liberties Union should use its “considerable resources” to find the parents who have been separated from their children and deported by the government. The Associated Press reports federal officials requested that the ACLU help find deported parents in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras who have been separated from their children under the Trump administration’s family-separation policy for undocumented immigrants. The organization, which sued the federal government on behalf of the separated parents, responded that the Trump administration “must bear the ultimate burden of finding the parents.” While the ACLU said it would help, it pinned “the crisis” on the Trump administration and said it would need to take “significant and prompt steps” to find deported parents on its own. The government has a database of home-country addresses but does not present any useful information for about 120 of the children now in custody. According to the most recent count, 431 children were in U.S. custody while their parents were outside of the country.