ACLU: 911 children split at border since 2018 court order

SAN DIEGO -- More than 900 children, including babies and toddlers, were separated from their parents at the border in the year after a judge ordered the practice be sharply curtailed, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday in a legal attack inviting more scrutiny of the Trump administration's widely criticized tactics.

The ACLU said the administration is separating families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions, including traffic offenses. It asked a judge to rule on whether the 911 separations from June 28, 2018, to June 29 of this year were justified.

In June 2018 -- days after President Donald Trump retreated amid an international uproar -- U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the practice of splitting up families at the border be halted except in limited circumstances, such as threats to child safety. The judge left individual decisions to the administration's discretion.

Since then, a parent was separated for having damaged property valued at $5, the ACLU said. A 1-year-old was separated after an official criticized her father for letting her sleep with a wet diaper.

In another case, a 2-year-old Guatemalan girl was separated from her father after authorities examined her for a fever and diaper rash and found she was malnourished and underdeveloped, the ACLU said. The father, who came from an "extraordinarily impoverished community" rife with malnutrition, was accused of neglect.

About 20% of the 911 children separated in the year after the judge's order were younger than 5 years old, the ACLU said.

Most parents went weeks without knowing where their children were, and some weren't even clear on why they had been separated. Roughly a third of the 900 children who have been separated from their families since the judge's order have been in the care of Catholic Charities Community Services, which says only three children have been reunited with the parent with whom they traveled.

The organization said 185 children were released to sponsors after weeks or months in government shelters and 33 were returned to their home countries.

The separations occurred during an unprecedented surge of children from Central America overwhelming U.S. authorities, most coming in families but many unaccompanied. Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told a Senate committee Tuesday the agency encountered more than 300,000 children since Oct. 1.

More than 2,700 children were separated at the time of Sabraw's 2018 ruling, which forced the government to reunify them with their parents.

The judge later ordered the government to find children who were separated since July 1, 2017, a group an internal watchdog report estimated numbered in the thousands but has not yet been determined. The administration didn't have adequate tracking systems at the time.

The ACLU, which based its findings on reports the administration provided, asked Sabraw to order the government to justify separations over the last year and to clarify its criteria for doing so.

"It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said. "The administration must not be allowed to circumvent the court order over infractions like minor traffic violations."

The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.