By Maria Ortiz
09 Dec 2023, 17:53 PM EST
A federal judge in California on Friday approved a court settlement that will prohibit U.S. federal border officials from practicing the policy of separating migrant families at the southern U.S. border for the next eight years.
Under the agreement between the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Biden administration that Judge Dana Sabraw approved on Friday, the federal government will be prohibited from separating immigrant children from their parents except for medical or safety reasons.
There are limited exceptions to the eight-year ban, such as when a father represents a risk to his children.
The judicial decision also approves some benefits to families who were affected by Trump’s policy to separate minors from their parents.
The agreement will benefit about 5,000 families and will take effect on December 11, according to the ACLU, which filed the lawsuit in 2018.
“This agreement is a fundamental step toward closing one of the darkest chapters of the Trump administration. “Babies and young children were literally torn from their parents’ arms under this horrific practice,” ACLU attorney who led the lawsuit, Lee Gelern, said in a statement.
The pact approved this Friday also includes processes through which the government must provide information to family members who have already been separated and establishes the channels through which parents or guardians can communicate with their minor children, in addition to specifying the circumstances under which The government must reunify the family when the situation allows it.
Trump, who seeks to run again in the 2024 presidential elections, enacted during his government a “zero tolerance” policy at the borderwhich charged adults who crossed into US territory irregularly with criminal charges.
The minors, who by law could not be in a federal prison, They were separated from their parents and were in the hands of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
Some 5,500 immigrant children were separated from their families at the border under Trump’s anti-immigration policy. Most of them have already been reunited with their families, although there are still hundreds who remain under the guardianship of the Government.
As of September 2023, a task force created by the Biden administration had managed to reunite more than 760 children with their families, according to data from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
With information from EFE
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