By Vy Tran
SAN DIEGO, CA — U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw last week here verbally approved a settlement, first announced in Oct. 2023, in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of thousands of families who had no political nor legal voice.
The case of Ms. L v. ICE ended the Trump administration’s “illegal zero-tolerance practice” of separating children and newborns from their parents at the border, said the ACLU.
“This settlement is a critical step toward closing one of the darkest chapters of the Trump administration. Babies and toddlers were literally ripped from their parents’ arms under this horrific practice. Thousands of families were torn apart,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead attorney.
This week the settlement will formally begin, including continuous government identification for separated family members, funded reunification in the U.S., provided asylum opportunities, exclusive benefits of work authorization, housing and legal assistance, medical services and the banning of reinstating another similar “zero-tolerance” policy for the next eight years.
Roughly 4,000 to 5,000 children and their parents will be covered under this agreement, according to the ACLU.
“While this settlement alone can’t fix the unfathomable damage done to these children, it does provide hope and support that didn’t exist before. But there remains enormous work ahead to implement this settlement, including reuniting the hundreds of children who are still separated from their loved ones after all these years,” Gelernt added.
The ACLU and its partners have been working separately from the government in reuniting families and will continue to do so, the ACLU added, noting, “No family should be forced to go through this nightmare and tragedy ever again.”
U.S. District Judge Sabraw said, “It is unfortunate, but we can only bring a certain amount of justice to all of this. And we are getting close. If we can find every child and provide that reunification with their parent, we have accomplished a great deal.”
The judge added, “But, of course, that doesn’t address the underlying trauma and the wrong and the years that have gone by. We have discussed cases where families have been separated, and four or five years later they are being reunited. And what does that look like?
“The child doesn’t know their parent. The child has often grown comfortable with an adopted family or a sponsor, and then the parent wants their child back. It is a really difficult circumstance. And, of course, it is all caused by a practice that was unconstitutional.”
The ACLU noted that, despite the turbulent period Trump’s policy has caused, everyone in the courtroom…agreed that this settlement agreement is the closest thing they could do in order to “restore justice.”
