SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — Hundreds of migrant parents who were separated from their children years ago under the Trump administration's immigration crackdown are still nowhere to be found.
That's according to a new legal filing by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been working to reunite these children with their parents, who were previously deported.
A federal judge in San Diego in June 2018 ordered the federal government to reunite all migrant families separated under the Trump Administration's immigration policy at the time.
More than two years later, though, hundreds of those families are still split apart.
The ACLU's legal filing claims that out of 1,030 migrant children separated from their families, lawyers have not been able to reach the parents for 545 of those kids.
Approximately two-thirds of those parents are believed to have been deported back to their home countries, often in Central America.
These 545 children were separated from their parents before the Trump administration implemented its "zero tolerance" policy in 2018, which criminally prosecuted anyone entering the U.S. illegally.
"Many of them are under five years old and an enormous percentage are under 10 years old," said Lee Gelernt, attorney for the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "So some of the children may have spent half their lives at this point separated from their families."
"It is shameful. It is shameful behavior," said immigrant rights activist Enrique Morones, founder of Gente Unida. "They were torn apart from their parents under false pretenses."
"A society is judged on how we treat our children, and the fact that 545 children are separated from their parents, and nobody knows where their parents are, is horrific," Morones added.
The ACLU also said that it has been unable to locate 362 of the children, who are believed to be staying with relatives or in foster care in the United States,
This week, the Trump administration claimed that their parents, deported back to their home countries, want their kids to remain here.
"We've contacted these families, and the sad truth is that many of them have declined to accept their children back," said Brian Morgenstern, White House deputy press secretary.
Also this week, Jewish Family Service of San Diego and other groups that assist asylum seekers filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging its current "remain in Mexico" policy which the suit claims denies asylum seekers, forced to remain in border camps in Mexico, access to legal representation.
"My concern is the safety: the families are exposed to so many dangers," said Sister Noirma Pimetal of Catholic Charities, who works with the asylum seekers. "All our policies are geared toward simply to deter families, to discourage them, to totally disregard the humanity."
The "remain in Mexico policy"' for asylum seekers is also currently being challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court in a separate case. A hearing for that has been scheduled for this coming spring.