Deported Parents Choosing Not to Be Reunited With Children, Holding Out Hope to Return to U.S.

There's a couple of numbers that have received significantly less attention in most news reports about the ACLU's legal fight: 485, the number of children whose parents have been located, and 0, how many of those parents have sought to have their children returned home.

Chase Jennings, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said in a prepared statement the department has "Taken every step to facilitate the reunification of these families where the parents wanted such reunification to occur." "The simple fact is this: after contact has been made with the parents to reunite them with their children, many parents have refused," he said, noting that "Out of the 485 children whom plaintiffs' counsel has been able to contact, they have yet to identify a single family that wants their child reunited with them in their country of origin." The Trump campaign has picked up on that talking point.

The parents haven't really confronted the choice of whether they want to bring their kids back to Central America, because they still hope the courts will allow them come to the U.S. In the meantime, the kids remain with relatives or foster families as they seek asylum, Gelernt said.

In response to the lawsuit, a U.S district judge ordered the government to stop separating families and to produce a list of kids who had been separated from their parents.

The parents of those kids all have been located, including about 470 parents who had been deported.

Last year the government acknowledged there was another 1,000-plus children who had been separated from their parents who hadn't previously been disclosed, Gelernt said.

"It's a very dangerous journey that people undertake to cross, in many cases coming all the way through Mexico, and it's why we should not lay out the welcome mat and encourage people to do that," Murtaugh, the Trump campaign spokesman, said on CNN. Gelernt, who is fighting in court to allow the parents to come to the U.S., said he doesn't think the threat of separation is a real disincentive for the migrant parents he's met.
 

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/hundreds-of-deported-parents-choosing-not-to-be-reunited-with-their-children-at-home-holding-out-hope-they-can-return-to-u-s/