The family separation crisis took a turn yesterday, when the Trump administration revealed in a federal court filing its intention to deport families immediately upon reunifying them. The ACLU had sought a court order blocking the deportation of any parent with a final order of removal until one week after notification that they have been reunited with their children. 

This waiting period is crucial to ensure that parents have an opportunity to make an informed decision about whether to fight their own removal cases, leave their children (who may have their own asylum claims) behind in the United States, or make some other decision. In short, families will be making life-altering decisions after months of traumatic separation — and the fact that the government is trying to shortchange them a matter of days to do so is galling. 

On Tuesday in court, we argued that given reports of a chaotic reunification process — not to mention the trauma caused by prolonged involuntary separation — families require a waiting period of seven days after notification of reunion, so that they can meet with attorneys and be fully apprised of their rights before any deportations occur. A Justice Department attorney pushed back, saying “The government takes issue with the assertion that there is a mess on the ground. We have many reasons to be proud of this effort." 

Well, here’s what we take issue with: 

• A mother being told that signing a government form would lead her to be reunified with her 16-year-old son, and then finding out she had just allegedly signed away her rights to see him again. She could not read the form herself because her Spanish literacy is minimal. 
• ICE officers telling a mother who stated her wish to seek asylum that “applying for asylum would take six to eight months and that she would not see her daughter during that time period,” even though she has a right to be reunified under the court order.
• Parents being taken to rooms with 30-50 other people and being forced to fill out forms with only a few minutes to decide whether or not to leave their children behind in the United States.
• A father who was told that the only way for his daughter, who faced mortal danger in Guatemala, to remain in the United States was for him to sign “this document.” He had no opportunity to review the document or ask questions about it. He had no idea that by signing it, he agreed to voluntary departure and relinquished his right to be reunited with her. The entire interaction lasted one minute. 

These are only some of the stories emerging from on the ground where advocates and attorneys are diligently trying to reach hundreds of parents at risk of deportation — 900 by the government’s latest tally.

The emotional and logistical obstacles to providing meaningful counsel in even just seven days are significant. Parents are seeing their children for the first time in weeks or even months. For many, they are understandably too traumatized to receive even basic legal advice.

Manoj Govindaiah, the director of Family Detention Services at the immigrant services group RAICES, provided this snapshot of his experience counseling families who had been reunified and detained at Karnes detention center just days ago:

The experience of separation has also inculcated families with skepticism and distrust to a level that far exceeds any that I have previously experienced with our clients. Many fathers needed extended coaxing in order to believe that I was not there to take their children away from them. One father asked me multiple times to prove who I was (when I introduced myself as a lawyer from RAICES), and showing him my bar card, my business card, and my driver’s license was insufficient. It was only when I went through our database and listed the names of all the RAICES staff and volunteers that I believe he had previously met with that he appeared to believe I was who I said I was. At the conclusion of our meeting, when I asked him why he was distrustful of me at first, he said something along the lines of since he and his son entered this country, they have been lied to, that he doesn’t know who is government and who isn’t, and now that he has his son back, he will not let his son go anywhere without him.

Mr. Govindaiah also shared that “trauma has made it difficult for parents to even comprehend or focus on what lawyers advise,” sharing how one father responded to every statement he made by asking whether he could stay with his son.

One father could not comprehend anything I was saying. Any statement I made would elicit a response of “but my son and I can stay together, right?” When we discussed his legal options, his repeated response was “but as long as I’m with my son, I’ll be ok. I’ll be with my son that whole time, right?” The meeting ended without any meaningful information being developed from the client or advice being provided because the father could not move past his fear of re-separation.

Even if attorneys are able to counsel families despite the enormous and understandable emotional strain they are under, there are logistical impediments that make these cases unusually complex.

Most families who come to family detention centers have their proceedings conducted in that facility, which makes it relatively simple for their lawyers to track their cases. By contrast, the government has frequently moved separated families from facility to facility. Parents often arrive without paperwork and don’t know the status of their immigration cases. What’s more, their children’s immigration cases have been proceeding on an entirely separate track. 

The situation is only about to get more dire.

The government’s latest filing indicated that within the next few days, hundreds of parents with removal orders may be reunited with their children at the Karnes detention center in South Texas.

This facility has never had to absorb such an influx of complicated cases. One attorney who has spent considerable time counseling detaining families at Karnes described an observation trip just last week saying, “I saw a level of disarray that I have not seen since my initial days at the facility when it first opened.”

The chaos playing out on the ground stems directly from the government’s choice to enact a policy of separating families with no thought or plan as to how parents and children would eventually be reunited.

The Trump administration took children, including babies, from their parents and did not return them for weeks and often many months. In fact, some children will remain separated after the court’s deadline because the government failed to track their parents, and may in fact have deported them already.

The government simply does not have ground to stand on when it argues that it cannot wait a mere seven days to remove families who are reunited, so that they can be informed of their rights before making life-altering decisions. 

Late one September afternoon in 2017, on an ordinary residential street in a predominantly African-African neighborhood of the nation’s capital, M.B. Cottingham and his friends had gathered to discuss how to celebrate his birthday that evening. Someone popped a bottle of champagne. 

And then everything changed. 

In what D.C. residents (and even a federal appeals court judge) recognize as common practice in the city, police cars rolled up and the officers jumped out to confront this group of African-African men congregating peacefully on the streets of their own neighborhood. Though the officers had no reason for suspicion, they demanded to know if the men had guns. The men all said no. 

One officer approached Mr. Cottingham, a lifelong D.C. resident who works as an ice-cream vendor, selling frozen treats out of a truck. The officer, Sean Lojacono, asked Mr. Cottingham about a bulge in his sock. Mr. Cottingham pulled out a legal amount of marijuana and — having been stopped and frisked countless times by D.C. police since he was 14 and hoping to keep the situation from escalating — volunteered to let the officer frisk him. 

What happened next was shocking both to Mr. Cottingham and the thousands of viewers who would later watch the video of the incident online. 

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Ranging far beyond what should have been a limited pat-down for weapons, Officer Lojacono jammed his fingers between Mr. Cottingham’s buttocks and grabbed his genitals. Mr. Cottingham physically flinched and verbally protested, making clear that this highly intrusive search was not within the scope of the frisk to which he had consented. Officer Lojacono responded by handcuffing Mr. Cottingham and returning to probe the most sensitive areas of his person — two more excruciating times.

No warrant, probable cause, reasonable suspicion, or consent justified the scope of these probes, which were conducted in broad daylight in public and with no other discernible reason than to humiliate and degrade Mr. Cottingham and to display the officer’s power over him.

“Once he thrust his finger in my bottom, I wanted to turn around and punch him in his face,” Mr. Cottingham said afterwards. “But the thought that kept running across my mind is, they gonna kill you. I thought about teddy bears being up under the tree or becoming a hashtag. I have kids that I have to live for.”

In his three searches of Mr. Cottingham’s anal area, Officer Lojacono didn’t find anything. He didn’t arrest him or anyone else. Instead, as a parting shot, Officer Lojacono taunted Mr. Cottingham and his friends from the loudspeaker on his car as he and his fellow officers drove away.

Depressed, humiliated, and feeling defeated after what he had experienced, Mr. Cottingham turned inward. He didn’t want to go outside. He could barely bring himself to work his ice cream truck. His side-career as a musician that had been taking off, with paid gigs, now fizzled as Mr. Cottingham lost his drive to perform. He hasn’t performed since the search. Meanwhile, Officer Lojacono remains on the D.C. police force.

Last week, we sued Officer Lojacono on Mr. Cottingham’s behalf for the violation of his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures. We have asked a jury to assess the appropriate amount to compensate him for what he has suffered and continues to endure, but the case is not ultimately about money.

Mr. Cottingham is suing for his dignity. He is asserting his basic humanity. He is standing up for his community, too often disrespected by police and viewed as potential suspects rather than as neighbors, employees, friends, and family members.

Sadly, we know that for every Mr. Cottingham who has his story captured on video and brought to public attention, there are many more here in D.C. and across the country who suffer this kind of abuse at the hands of law enforcement without recourse or redress — including some whose names do become hashtags.

That is why it is so important that Mr. Cottingham came forward, despite the trauma of what he experienced, to assert his rights, to call attention to the practice of stop and frisk and the abuses that follow, and to shine a light on a harsh reality that many communities of color face.

The July 26 deadline for the federal government to reunite thousands of separated children with their parents is three days away.

Here’s what you need to know about where the reunification process stands.

How many children have been reunited?

On July 23, the Trump administration told the court that it had reunited or 'appropriately discharged' 1,187 of the 2,551 children ages five and older who were forcibly separated from their parents. The government has also reunited 58 out of 103 children who are under the age of five and whose reunions were required by the first deadline, July 10.

The government identified 1,634 class members who are eligible for reunification and are in various stages of the process. However, in the same federal court filing, the government has claimed that the separated children of 917 parents are either not eligible, or “not yet known to be eligible,” for reunification. 

What could render a parent and child “ineligible” for reunification?

The government has provided certain categories of children and parents whom it considers ineligible for reunion by the deadline. These buckets include:

• Parents whom the government has not located
• Parents who are currently in criminal custody
• Parents with an alleged criminal history that would present a danger to the child
• Parents who have a communicable disease

Many of the children whose parents are ineligible may become eligible, for instance as parents are located, released from criminal custody into ICE custody, or a disease passes. 

For parents whose eligibility the government is challenging based on a prohibitive criminal history or unfitness finding by ORR or ICE, more information is clearly needed. As we’ve argued in court — the government’s word alone on this determination is not sufficient, which is why we’ve asked the court to order the government to provide details about the nature of the charge, conviction, or warrant for each parent whom the government excluded, so that we can verify that not reunifying the child is truly in their best interest.

On July 20, Judge Sabraw indicated that he would wait to rule on this matter until after the July 26 deadline, instead focusing on all eligible class members ahead of that day.  

For children under 5, the government said that 20 children fit these criteria and for children five and over, 64. These numbers may change given that 260 parents are still being categorized in the government's murky "further evaluation" bucket.

As of July 23, the government reported that 130 parents had waived their right for reunification, meaning that their child would stay in the U.S. while they are removed, either in Office of Refugee Resettlement custody or possibly being released to a sponsor.

It is critical that we are able to reach these parents and independently verify that they made this important choice with full knowledge of their families’ legal rights. In court on Friday, the government was not able to say how many of the 136 parents were still in the country, and this is information we will continue to press for.

The government still hasn’t found all the parents?

As of July 20, the Trump administration reported that it had 37 children in government custody who have “not yet been matched” to a parent from whom they were taken.

Additionally, when asked in court, the administration was not able to provide a count of the number of parents who were released from ICE custody and whose locations are still unknown.

Finally, there is the all-important question of where are the parents whom the government has already deported? For the separated children under five years old, there were an estimated 12 parents who had already been deported by the time of the court’s June 26 order requiring reunion. 

On July 23, the government reported that per “case notes,” as many as 463 parents of children five and older may no longer be in the United States. These cases are apparently “under review.”

What happens to families when the parents have final orders of removal?

As of July 23, the government estimated that 900 parents have final orders of removal. It’s crucial that the decisions they make about the future of their children’s asylum claims are informed and non-coerced. It cannot be made until parents not only have had the time to fully discuss the ramifications with their children, but also to seek legal advice.

We sought a court order that would block the deportation of any parent until one week after they are reunited with their children. The court is weighing this request, but in the short-term, it has blocked all deportations until July 24.