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Absent in Texas Court: Immigrant Parents

by Aline Barros

   MCALLEN, TEXAS --

   Days after the Trump administration reversed a policy of separating
   migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, no parents were being
   criminally prosecuted for the misdemeanor of illegal entry, immigration
   advocates told reporters outside the McAllen,Texas courthouse.
   Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Efren Olivares said it "appears to
   be a change" from what has been happening in recent days.

   "There wasn't a single person who said 'I'm a father or I'm a mother
   who has been separated from my child,'" Olivares related.
   The Texas Civil Rights Project attorneys and volunteers have been
   gathering information from those separated from their children since
   May 25 and have interviewed more than 380 parents. They plan to come
   back to court Monday to continue their work.
   Still, there were people who had been separated from underage relatives
   in the courtroom Friday. Olivares said there were two brothers who had
   been separated from their siblings, and there was a cousin who had been
   separated from a younger cousin.

   Olivares said adults at court Friday had been arrested about two days
   ago and appeared in court in chains, handcuffed and in shackles.

   A day earlier, immigration attorneys and advocates in the courtroom
   were surprised to hear that cases had been dropped against parents
   charged with the misdemeanor of illegal entry.

   The federal public defender's office for the region that covers cases
   from El Paso to San Antonio told the Associated Press the U.S.
   Attorney's Office would be dismissing cases where parents were charged
   with illegally entering or re-entering the country and were
   subsequently separated from their children.

   Detained together
   "Going forward, they will no longer bring criminal charges against a
   parent or parents entering the United States if they have their child
   with them," Maureen Scott Franco, the federal public defender for the
   Western District of Texas, wrote in an email.

   The move would allow parents and children to be detained together, as
   specified by Trump in Wednesday's executive order. Children may not be
   incarcerated with parents who have been criminally charged. But it also
   flies in the face of the administration's "zero-tolerance" policy that
   says people who cross the border illegally should be criminally
   charged.
   The Department of Justice has said it is not dropping charges against
   detained immigrants, and DOJ lawyers Thursday asked a federal judge in
   California for an emergency ruling -- an attempt to overturn a
   decades-old settlement -- that would allow them to detain minors with
   their legal guardians until their immigration cases are adjudicated.
   Currently, authorities can only hold families in immigration detention
   for 20 days. On average, current cases are taking 721 days to resolve.
   Although the U.S. government is apparently changing procedures to
   accommodate President Donald Trump's move to stop separating families
   at the border, it is unclear how more than 2,300 children or so will
   return to parents.

   Aline Barros is an immigration reporter for VOA's News Center in
   Washington, D.C. Before joining VOA in 2016, Aline worked for the
   Gazette Newspapers and Channel 21 Montgomery Community Media, both in
   Montgomery County, Md. She has been published by the Washington Post,
   G1 Portal Brazilian News, and Fox News Latino. Aline holds a broadcast
   journalism degree from University of Maryland. Follow her
   @AlineBarros2.