Attorneys Say About 20 Migrant Children Separated from Parents Remain in New York

During the Trump Administration's zero tolerance policy, about 300 kids were sent to New York shelters after being separated from their migrant parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Now, attorneys tell WNYC that about 20 young clients remain.

"These are all kids who are seeking to be released to sponsors or returned to their home country," said Beth Krause, supervising attorney with the Legal Aid Society's Immigrant Youth Project, which represented many children and also joined a lawsuit over the family separation policy.

Attorneys blame the government for the prolonged separation, almost three months after a court-imposed deadline for reuniting 2,500 children who were taken from their parents. The government claimed some parents were not eligible to join their children again because of "red flags" or criminal backgrounds. Hundreds more were deported. 

About 200 children are still in government custody.

The children who are seeking to stay with relatives in the U.S. have endured long waits because those sponsors must be vetted and fingerprinted. There was also a lack of communication and coordination, said Alexandra Rizio, a senior staff attorney with the Safe Passage Project. The New York non-profit represented 62 children who were separated from their families. Rizio said their last client, an 8-year-old boy described as "tiny," finally joined his father this week at a Texas detention center — five months after they were separated.

"Like many of our other cases, we really got the runaround from the government," she said, adding that it took months for them to learn why the boy wasn't reunited with his dad in time for the court's July 26 deadline. They eventually found out there was a red flag in the father's background check. Safe Passage demanded that the boy and his father return to Guatemala together instead of being repatriated separately.

Rizio said the government didn't even notify her office when the child was flown to Texas to join his father this week. Instead, she learned from another attorney in Texas who spotted the father in a family detention center with a child.

"We got on the phone yet again with ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and finally they confirmed yes, they had moved him five days ago and hadn't updated us."

She said the boy spent the past five months in a foster home in New York City and spoke to his father by phone. She said he did not have any serious issues and he's back in Guatemala now with his dad.

But Rizio said five of Safe Passage's clients were reunited with parents in September, and a few were "really despondent, just losing all hope, extremely frustrated by the situation and by the fact that we weren't getting updates in real time."

Correction: The original version of this story misspelled Alexandra Rizio's name. WNYC regrets the error. The article also said 20 separated children remain in New York, but that has been corrected because the precise number is not known.