The United Nations, however, issued its strongest condemnation of the Trump policy yet, claiming on Friday that separating migrant children from their parents at the border "may amount to torture," cited by multiple sources.

Experts representing the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) noted that Trump's attempt to stop the controversial ongoing US practice does not actually stop the detentions and "may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards," cited by the Washington Post.

UNHRC experts additionally noted that the new White House executive order does not address key points that allow the previous Trump separation edicts to continue.

"This executive order does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents. We call on the government of the US to release these children from immigration detention and to reunite them with their families based on the best interests of the child, and the rights of the child to liberty and family unity," according to the UNHRC statement.

The UNHRC announcement noted that any detention of children is punishment.

 

"Detention of children is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture," according to the UNHRC statement.

"Children are being used as a deterrent to irregular migration, which is unacceptable."

Rights groups around the world have called attention to the likelihood that abuses contained within Trump's original separation decree will not be stopped by the president's Wednesday order, including how to free some 2,300 children — some very small — who were thrown into detention camps through the use of the White House policy after a "zero tolerance" interpretation of US border laws was imposed in mid-April.

The Trump zero tolerance policy has resulted in every adult illegally crossing the border being arrested, detained and prosecuted; while, under the letter of the law, any minor child also apprehended is taken from its parent and placed in a separate holding facility.

Few concrete details are available to indicate precisely how the new Trump order will go about humanizing the process and, more significantly, how it will reunite previously locked-up children with their parents.

"Separations have been conducted without notice, information, or the opportunity to challenge them," the UNHRC stated.

"The parents and children have been unable to communicate with each other. The parents have had no information about the whereabouts of their children, which is a cause of great distress. Moreover, we are deeply concerned at the long-term impact and trauma, including irreparable harm that these forcible separations have on the children," cited by Dailykos.com.

The UNHRC group observed that some of the detained children are young enough to still be breastfeeding.

The White House zero tolerance border arrest policy was announced earlier by Trump's pick for US attorney general, Jeff Sessions who asserted last week that the practice of separating children from their parents was a form of God's will.

Shocking images of detained children in a Texas facility revealed metal cages inside a windowless temperature-controlled former Walmart warehouse, while lawmakers and reporters seeking additional information on the practice were denied entry.

The damning UNHRC condemnation was released just days after the US withdrew membership in the global human-rights organization, according to The Independent. </s> On Monday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein addressed the locking up of immigrant children in camps by the U.S. in a statement to the 38th session of the Human Rights Council saying, “In the past six weeks, nearly two thousand children have been forcibly separated from their parents. The American Association of Pediatrics has called this cruel practice “government-sanctioned child abuse” which may cause “irreparable harm,” with “lifelong consequences”. The thought that any State would seek to deter parents by inflicting such abuse on children is unconscionable. I call on the United States to immediately end the practice of forcible separation of these children.”

One day later, in response to those comments, the Trump administration pulled out of the Human Rights Council, with U.N. Ambassador Nicki Haley saying, “For too long the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers and a cesspool of political bias.”

The United States once held the had the lead in international advocacy for human rights around the globe and has been outspoken in the protection of human rights, with its withdrawal from the council, that voice will be noticeably diminished.

Sen. Chris Coons was among those who were dismayed at the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw, said, “The U.N. Human Rights Council isn’t perfect, but withdrawing the United States from this important body sends a clear message that the Trump administration does not intend to lead the world when it comes to human rights, it also makes it harder for the United States to prevent the Human Rights Council from taking positions we oppose.“

The withdrawal was expected and the Trump administration hinted at the idea over a year ago, and with the appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor of the United States, the withdrawal was not as much an “if,” but a “when.” </s> A US judge ordered that migrant families separated at the border with Mexico under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy be reunited within 30 days.

For children under five, reunification must take place within two weeks of the order, issued Tuesday by US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.

Sabraw issued the ruling in response to a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a seven-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.

The judge also issued an injunction against any more family separations.

US federal authorities have 10 days to allow parents to call their children if they are not already in touch with them.

Trump signed an executive order last week halting his government's practice of taking children away from parents who cross the border without papers, even to seek asylum. Many are fleeing violence in Central America.

But the order made no specific provisions for families already separated under the policy, which drew scorn as inhumane and even a form of child abuse in heated criticism in America and around the world.

More than 2,000 children taken from their families remain under the care of federal authorities.

The judge was scathing in his criticism of the Trump policy of taking kids away from their parents.

"The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance -- responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making," Sabraw wrote in the 24-page ruling.

"They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution," the judge added. </s> Detention of children is inhumane. The United States must adopt community-based alternatives.

President Trump has signed an Executive Order to end his own administration’s policy of separating migrant and asylum-seeking children from their parents in the face of a massive public outcry and global condemnation. The order calls for children to instead be detained with their families, as part of the administration’s new “zero tolerance” tactic which seeks to prosecute all immigrants who cross the border illegally. To date, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) director of programs, Homer Venters, MD, said the executive order is still a cruel measure, and is unacceptable.

“Children do not belong in jails. The new Executive Order simply replaces one cruel action of deliberately breaking apart families with another cruel practice of keeping children locked up with their families. This is profoundly harmful, conflicts with the child’s best interests, and constitutes a violation of child rights,” Venters said.

“It is imperative that the Trump administration swiftly reinstate community-based alternatives to detention, which are humane, effective in terms of both compliance and cost, and which lessen trauma experienced by children and families. It is also of the utmost importance that the thousands of children who have been separated from their families be reunited with them – no matter the cost. So far, there has been no credible indication from the Trump administration that this is planned, or indeed even deemed possible,” Venters added.

Family detention is not a neutral option. Extensive medical research shows that immigration detention is harmful and strongly correlated with negative mental health outcomes. Children who are detained have been shown to exhibit poor physical and psychological health even after a brief stay in detention, which increase the risk of long-term negative effects. Detention has a devastating impact on families, including from restrictions that constrain the ability of parents to respond to their child’s needs in a normal manner.

Kathryn Hampton, PHR’s Asylum Network program officer, said the decision to inflict more harm could not come at a more inopportune time.

“It is a grotesque irony for such an order to be issued on World Refugee Day, given that a substantial number of families being detained are fleeing circumstances of violence and persecution and seeking safe haven in the United States. The so-called ‘zero tolerance’ policy is a cynical effort to chip away at longstanding protections for refugees and asylum seekers,” Hampton said.

In past years, PHR evaluators made regular trips to provide forensic evaluations for children held in family detention facilities. They found that the detention settings were extremely inappropriate and un-therapeutic for the children. Horrific conditions have been reported, including preventable deaths caused by lack of access to adequate medical care.

Psychiatrist, Kirandeep Kaur, DO, who recently carried out evaluations on immigrant children in Dilley, Texas, also called on the Trump administration to treat immigrants humanely.

“As a psychiatrist, I have personally observed conditions in detention centers and they are not acceptable due to a lack of regulation or enforceable standards related to important aspects such as mental health care, medical care or education of young children,” Kaur said.

“The families I spoke with had endured tremendous hardship and most suffered from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Being confined to these detention centers is against international human rights laws and only serves to worsen the degree of trauma they have already experienced. Hence this administration must end this practice immediately,” she added.

PHR maintains that the new Executive Order is inconsistent with U.S. obligations under domestic and international law. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1997, through the Flores settlement, ruled that children must be released from custody as soon as possible and that, in the meantime, they must be held in the least restrictive setting possible. The Executive Order on its face violates both of these stipulations, as it will result in indefinite detention of immigrant children. Prolonged or indefinite detention violates the rights to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here. </s> (Reuters) – A federal judge yesterday ruled that U.S. immigration agents could no longer separate immigrant parents and children caught crossing the border from Mexico illegally, and must work to reunite those families that had been split up in custody.

United States District Court Judge Dana Sabraw granted the American Civil Liberties Union a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed over the family separations.

More than 2,300 migrant children were separated from their parents after the Trump administration began a “zero tolerance” policy in early May, seeking to prosecute all adults who crossed the border illegally, including those traveling with children.

The ACLU had sued on behalf of a mother and her then 6-year-old daughter, who were separated after arriving last November in the United States to seek asylum and escape religious persecution in Democratic Republic of Congo.

While they were reunited in March, the ACLU is pursuing class-action claims on behalf of other immigrants.

Trump issued an executive order to end the family separations on June 20, but the government has yet to reunite about 2,000 children with their parents.

Before the preliminary injunction ruling, the U.S. government urged Sabraw not to require that it stop separating and quickly reunite migrant families after they illegally cross the U.S.-Mexico border, saying President Donald Trump’s executive order last week “largely” addressed those goals. </s> A little girl and a woman along with other migrant families cross the street after being processed at the Central Bus Station before being taken to Catholic Charities before being removed in McAllen, Texas 26 June 2018. Immigration along the Rio Grande in Texas has become a political issue, due to the controversy surrounding the US Justice Department's suspended 'Zero Tolerance' policy of criminally prosecuting all migrants entering the country illegally and the now-reversed policy of separating migrant children from their parents. EPA-EFE/LARRY W. SMITH ORG XMIT: LWS119

McALLEN, Texas — A judge in California on Tuesday ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days, setting a hard deadline in a process that has so far yielded uncertainty about when children might again see their parents.

If children are younger than 5, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order issued Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego. Sabraw, an appointee of President George W. Bush, also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit or doesn’t want to be with the child. It also requires the government to provide phone contact between parents and their children within 10 days.

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters — hundreds of miles away, in some cases — under a now-abandoned policy toward families caught illegally entering the U.S.

Amid an international outcry, Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families and said parents and children will instead be detained together.

The lawsuit in San Diego involves a 7-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.

Also Tuesday, 17 states, including New York and California, sued the Trump administration Tuesday to force it to reunite children and parents. The states, all led by Democratic attorneys general, joined Washington, D.C., in filing the lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, arguing that they are being forced to shoulder increased child welfare, education and social services costs.

“The administration’s practice of separating families is cruel, plain and simple,” New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in a statement. “Every day, it seems like the administration is issuing new, contradictory policies and relying on new, contradictory justifications. But we can’t forget: The lives of real people hang in the balance.”

More: USA TODAY tracking where separated children sent

More: Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' border prosecutions led to time served, $10 fees

More: The Wall: Explore 2,000 miles between U.S., Mexico

In a speech before the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Los Angeles, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the administration for taking a hardline stand on illegal immigration and said the voters elected President Donald Trump to do just that.

“This is the Trump era,” he said. “We are enforcing our laws again. We know whose side we are on – so does this group – and we’re on the side of police, and we’re on the side of the public safety of the American people.”

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for a comment on the multistate lawsuit.

Juan Sanchez, chief executive of the nation’s largest shelters for migrant children, said he fears a lack of urgency by the U.S. government could mean it will take months to reunite families.

Sanchez with the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs said in an interview with The Associated Press that the government has no process in place to speed the return of children to their parents.

“It could take days,” he said. “Or it could take a month, two months, six or even nine. I just don’t know.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Congress on Tuesday that his department still has custody of 2,047 immigrant children separated from their parents at the border. That is only six fewer children than the number in HHS custody as of last Wednesday.

Democratic senators said that wasn’t nearly enough progress.

“HHS, Homeland Security, and the Justice Department seem to be doing a lot more to add to the bedlam and deflect blame than they’re doing to tell parents where their kids are,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden said.

Under questioning, Azar refused to be pinned down on how long it will take to reunite families. He said his department does extensive vetting of parents to make sure they are not traffickers masquerading as parents.

Tens of thousands of Central American migrants traveling with children — as well as children traveling alone — are caught on the Mexican border each year. Many are fleeing gang violence in their home countries.

At a Texas detention facility, immigrant advocates complained that parents have gotten busy signals or no answers from a 1-800 number provided by federal authorities to get information about their children.

Attorneys have spoken to about 200 immigrants at the Port Isabel detention facility near Los Fresnos, Texas, since last week, and only a few knew where their children were being held, said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center in Virginia.

“The U.S. government never had any plan to reunite these families that were separated,” Sandoval-Moshenberg said, and now it is “scrambling to undo this terrible thing that they have done.”

A message left for HHS, which runs the hotline, was not immediately returned.

Many children in shelters in southern Texas have not had contact with their parents, though some have reported being allowed to speak with them in recent days, said Meghan Johnson Perez, director of the Children’s Project for the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, which provides free legal services to minors.

“Things might be changing now. The agencies are trying to coordinate better,” she said. “But the kids we have been seeing have not been in contact with the parents. They don’t know where the parent is. They’re just distraught. Their urgent need is just trying to figure out, ‘Where is my parent?’”

Since calling for an end to the separations, administration officials have been casting about for detention space for migrants, with the Pentagon drawing up plans to hold as many as 20,000 at U.S. military bases.

At the same time, the administration has asked the courts to let it detain families together for an extended period while their immigration cases are resolved. Under a 1997 court settlement, children must be released from detention as quickly as possible, which generally has been construed to be within 20 days.

Outraged by the family separations, immigrant supporters have led protests in recent days in states such as Florida and Texas. In Los Angeles, police arrested 25 demonstrators at rally Tuesday ahead of Sessions’ address.

Outside the U.S. attorney’s office, protesters carried signs reading, “Free the children!” and “Stop caging families.” Clergy members blocked the street by forming a human chain. Police handcuffed them and led them away.

Later, protesters gathered outside the hotel where Sessions gave his speech. As the attorney general’s motorcade arrived, the crowd chanted, “Nazi, go home.” </s> A judge in the US state of California has ordered the Trump administration to direct border authorities to reunite within the next 30 days migrant children and their families separated at its southern border with Mexico.

If the children are younger than five years old, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order, the order issued late on Tuesday said

US District Judge Dana Sabraw in the city of San Diego issued the order following a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

The lawsuit involves a seven-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.

Sabraw also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit.

She also criticised the Trump administration's policy "a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making".

"The practice of separating these families was implemented without any effective system or procedure for tracking the children after they were separated from their parents," Sabraw said.

The ACLU also noted that the current crisis unfolding is "driven by the view that immigrants and asylum seekers deserve nothing but cruelty and punishment".

More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters.

Widespread outrage over the issue forced US President Donald Trump to issue an executive order to stop the separation of families, and said parents and children will instead be detained together.

In a separate development, 17 states, including California, Washington and New York are suing to force the Trump administration to reunite families who have been separated at the US-Mexico border.

The states, all led by Democratic attorneys general, joined Washington, DC, on Tuesday, in filing the lawsuit in the US District Court in Seattle, the first legal challenge by states over the practice.

In Texas, the chief executive of the nation's largest shelters for migrant youths says he's "ready now" to start reuniting hundreds of children with their parents.

Juan Sanchez of the non-profit Southwest Key Programs spoke to the Associated Press news agency just hours before the order of the California court.

Earlier, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar refused to be pinned down on how long it would take.

He said his department does extensive vetting of parents to make sure they are not traffickers masquerading as parents.

Sanchez said he opposed the family-separation policy, but for the sake of the children, he felt his organisation needed to take them in. </s> U.S. President Donald Trump has rescinded a policy that separated migrant children from their parents and placed them in detention centres, but the outcry over the situation has prompted many Canadians to ask about their own country’s detention practices.

Hanna Gros, a senior fellow with the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program, helped author a 2017 study of Canada’s child detainment.

She says Canada does not separate migrant families en masse in detention. However, there are still cases of child detainment, which can cause depression, anxiety and selective mutism.

Gros spoke to CTV News Channel’s Merella Fernandez on Wednesday, and explained that although the numbers of migrant children in detention are declining, she’s believes it is “always a violation of their human rights.”

What are our practices here in this country?

First of all, I think it’s important to highlight that while the U.S. is a natural comparison point, this is not like anything we see in Canada. We don’t detain children en masse and we don’t have family separation en masse.

But that doesn’t mean that there are no human rights violations being committed in the context of Canadian immigration detention.

Children end up in detention in one of two ways. They’re either under formal detention orders, in cases where they’re found to be either a danger to the public, a flight risk or (have) an unclear identity. Otherwise they can end up housed in detention in order to accompany their detained parents.

The international community has been clear on the fact that children should not be in detention. It is always a violation of their human rights.

The other side is separating them from their family, which could be detrimental as well?

Absolutely. And there is a right to family unity in international law as well. So we’re advocating for twinned principals of no child detention and no family separation.

That would mean, of course, that people crossing the border and bringing children would automatically be released and never be detained and that might give people a motive to bring children across the border?

I think that it’s clear that people don’t seek asylum for fun. People are seeking asylum and coming over our borders because they need to. They’re fleeing persecution. This is not a field trip. People need to leave where they’re living.

Do we know how long families are detained?

There’s actually been a great deal of improvement in the lengths of detention with respect to children. We’ve seen reduced numbers both in the number of children detained and the lengths of time they’re detained recently.

Any idea how long that is?

It really depends on the case. On average, it could be a week. It could be two weeks. It depends on the case. It depends on the region as well.

I would say that one to two weeks is not ... a long time? What did it used to be?

The mental health evidence is clear that even brief periods of detention or family separation can have lasting and huge consequences for children’s health and well-being. We’ve seen children deteriorate even after being detained for 48 hours. </s> Los Angeles: US judge has ordered that migrant families separated at the border with Mexico under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy be reunited within 30 days.



 For children under five, reunification must take place within two weeks of the order issued Tuesday by US District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.

Sabraw made the sternly worded decision in response to a suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of a seven-year-old girl who was separated from her Congolese mother and a 14-year-old boy who was separated from his Brazilian mother.The judge also issued an injunction against any more family separations, which was part of a policy under which anyone crossing the border illegally is detained and referred for criminal prosecution.US federal authorities have 10 days to allow parents to call their children if they are not already in touch with them, the judge said.Trump last week signed an executive order halting his government's practice of taking children away from parents who cross the border without papers, even to seek asylum. Many are destitute people fleeing gang violence and other turmoil in Central America.It was a rare retreat for Trump, who has made fighting immigration -- both illegal and legal -- one of the most sacred mantras of his fiercely US-centered policy agenda.But the order made no specific provisions for families already separated under the policy, which sparked heated criticism in America and worldwide as inhumane and even a form of child abuse.More than 2,000 children taken from their families remain under the care of federal authorities. Some are just toddlers, or even infants.The ACLU argued that the administration has no real plan for reuniting families.Every night small children "are crying themselves to sleep wondering if they will ever see their parents again," said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.Now, the policy of detaining parents who cross illegally with children has been suspended, with authorities saying that among other factors they do not have space for all the families coming over from Mexico.Judge Sabraw was scathing in his criticism of the Trump policy of taking children away from their parents."The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance -- responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making," Sabraw wrote in the 24-page ruling."They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution," the judge added.The attorneys-general of 18 mainly Democratic states also filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging the Trump family separation policy.They argued that Trump's order halting the practice has so many caveats it is meaningless. It calls for money to be appropriated to reunite families but does not say how much or by when, and depends on a judge allowing indefinite detention of children, the officials wrote."Keeping children separated from their parents is inhumane, unconscionable and illegal -- and we're filing suit to stop it," wrote Attorney General Barbara Underwood of New York.Some 200 protesters turned out in Los Angeles to protest a visit by US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, one of the most visible faces of the Trump border control policy.Around 20 were arrested after defying police orders to disperse.Trump did score a big win on immigration Tuesday, however, as the US Supreme Court upheld the latest version of his travel ban targeting people from some Muslim-majority countries.By a 5-4 vote, the court's conservative majority said Trump was within his legal authority as president to issue such a ban.Trump pounced on the decision as an endorsement of his authority to defend national security and "a tremendous success and victory for the American people."Immigration has been among the thorniest issue in American politics for decades, with Congress repeatedly failing to pass comprehensive reforms.The House of Representatives intends to vote Wednesday on a broad immigration bill that ends family separations, but passage is in doubt. Should the bill fail, it would be a dramatic embarrassment for Trump's party.Hannah Hanmer, who was protesting with her baby in Los Angeles, said she was angry the government was trying "to remove human dignity from immigrants" arriving with children."I want to be one of the people who said no," the 26-year-old told AFP.(WAH)
The United Nations Human Rights Council issues a condemnation of the separation of migrant children from their parents, saying it "may amount to torture", and the recent executive order "does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents."