The Trump administration will reunite over 50 immigrant kids under five-years-old with their parents by the court-ordered deadline on Tuesday. The families will then be allowed to go free in the US, according to a government attorney on Monday.
But, the number is only around 50% of the toddlers included in the order. Sarah Fabian, a lawyer for the Justice Department, acknowledged at a court hearing that the US government would be unable to release all the children by the deadline for several reasons, including the removal from the US of some parents already having taken place. The reunion of 54 children and their parents will take place at locations across the nation by the end of Tuesday, with final background checks given to another five, Fabian says.
This is the first time that the government has given a sign whether children and their parents would be detained or released together, and they are to be allowed to go free while awaiting a resolution of their immigration cases, a process that could take several years.
Fabian made no mention about the timeframe for the release of the families, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement has few facilities to house them, with just three family detention centers capable of holding around 3,000 individuals at the most, which are already at or close to capacity.