McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Latest on the separation of immigrant children from their parents following President Donald Trump’s order allowing them to remain with their parents (all times local):
12:30 p.m.
The Justice Department has formally asked a federal judge to change the rules on detaining families caught at the border.
Lawyers on Thursday filed a memorandum to a class-settlement that governs how children are handled when they are caught crossing the U.S. border illegally.
The Flores settlement states that families cannot be detained longer than 20 days.
The move is aimed at stopping the separation of children from their families amid a new policy where anyone caught crossing the border is charged criminally.
President Donald Trump signed an order Wednesday stopping the practice that has resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their families. Homeland Security officials will detain families together.
It’s not clear what will happen with the children already separated.
12:25 p.m.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam has ordered state officials to investigate claims made by immigrant teens of severe physical abuse at a juvenile detention facility.
Northam announced the probe in a tweet on Thursday, hours after The Associated Press reported on a half-dozen sworn statements from Latino teens held at the Shenandoah Valley Juvenile Center.
Youths as young as 14 say they were beaten while handcuffed and locked up for long periods in solitary confinement, left nude and shivering in concrete cells.
Detainees also say the guards stripped them of their clothes and strapped them to chairs with bags placed over their heads.
The governor, a Democrat, said the allegations are disturbing and ordered the state’s secretary of public safety and homeland security to report back to him about conditions inside the facility.
The center’s lawyers deny all abuse allegations.
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12:20 p.m.
Melania Trump in a visit to Texas facility got a firsthand look at some of the migrant children sent there by the U.S. government after their families entered the country illegally.
The first lady’s stop Thursday at Upbring New Hope Children’s Center came the morning after President Donald Trump signed an executive order halting the practice of separating these families.
She visited a one-story red brick building, which houses 55 children between the ages of 12 and 17.
Third-graders welcomed the first lady with a large paper American flag they’d signed taped to a wall.
With the words, “Welcome! First Lady” written in black marker across the red and white bars, Mrs. Trump also signed the flag, which the children gave to her.
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11:20 a.m.
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland has been closed for a second day because of a demonstration against Trump administration immigration policies.
Agency spokeswoman Carissa Cutrell says people who had appointments scheduled for Thursday will be contacted by deportation officers to have their meetings rescheduled. The appointments will not be reported as missed check-ins.
Cutrell declined to say how many people work at the Portland office, or if they have been working from home.
The round-the-clock protest began Sunday, with protesters calling for an end to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in which all unlawful border crossings are referred for prosecution.
Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, a Trump critic, says he does not want city police involved in any effort to end the protest.
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11:10 a.m.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice says a report is inaccurate that parents who try to illegally cross the border with children will no longer be criminally prosecuted.
Spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores says there has been no change to the “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in the separation of more than 2,300 children from their parents.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an order to stop the separations. Justice Department lawyers are working on a legal challenge to allow families to be detained longer than 20 days.
The Washington Post reported that the policy was suspended until U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could find space to detain them.
In McAllen, Texas, a civil rights group attorney says federal prosecutors unexpectedly dropped misdemeanor charges against 17 adult immigrants who crossed the border with children Thursday.
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10:50 a.m.
Mayors who gathered at a holding facility for immigrant children at Texas’ border with Mexico say that President Trump has failed to address a humanitarian crisis of his own making with an executive order to halt the separation minors from families that are detained crossing the U.S. border illegally.
Seattle Mayor and former U.S. attorney Jenny Durkan said Thursday at a news conference on the outskirts of El Paso that immigrant shelters have been overwhelmed by criminal prosecutions ordered by the Trump administration.
She joined about 20 mayors from cities across the country to call for the immediate reunification of immigrant children with their families.
New York Mayor Bill de Blasio says that separated immigrant children still don’t know when they will see their parents again.
Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin says a request to tour the holding facility for minors at Tornillo, Texas, was denied by the Department of Health and Human Services.
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9:50 a.m.
An official says three immigrant children who have been staying in a Catholic Charities shelter in Fort Worth, Texas, are expected to be reunited with their family Thursday.
Heather Reynolds, the nonprofit’s director, says the three are among 12 immigrant children at the shelter who were separated from their parents under a Trump administration “zero tolerance” policy. She says half are boys and half are girls, and they range in age from age 5 to 12.
Reynolds declined to provide details about the three kids who are expected to be reunited with family Thursday.
She says Present Donald Trump’s executive order Wednesday allowing immigrant kids to remain with their parents mentions how future illegal border crossing will be handled, but it doesn’t address the more than 2,000 children who have already been separated since May. She says this leaves groups like hers “uncertain” about how to manage those kids already in detention in the U.S.
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9 a.m.
A civil rights group attorney says federal prosecutors unexpectedly dropped misdemeanor charges against 17 adult immigrants who crossed the border with children.
Efren Olivares, a lawyer with the Texas Civil Rights Project, said outside of the federal courthouse in McAllen, Texas, that the 17 immigrants were supposed to have been sentenced Thursday morning for improperly entering the U.S.
Olivares says the 17 will likely be placed in immigration detention, though he didn’t know whether they would be reunited immediately with their children or released altogether. Asked if they had any reaction to the charges against them being dropped, he said, “They’re asking about their children, frankly.”
The Texas Civil Rights Project is interviewing adults to track them and their children through separate government systems.
The dropping of the charges comes a day after President Donald Trump reversed a policy of forcibly separating immigrant children from their parents upon entering the U.S. without permission.
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