The US government is moving some migrant parents to detention sites closer to the young children they were separated from while crossing the US-Mexico border in an attempt to meet a court-imposed deadline to reunite families.
US Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego last month ordered the government to stop separating children from immigrant parents entering the United States illegally and set deadlines for the government to reunite families.
The judge's order followed a political firestorm over US President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policy and beefed up efforts to deter illegal US entry.
Sabraw set a deadline for children under five years old to be reunited with their parents by July 10, and for all children to be reunited by July 26. He also set a deadline of Friday for parents to be in phone contact with their children.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar said that based on a comprehensive audit by HHS and immigration authorities, there were now fewer than 3000 children in HHS care who may have been separated from parents taken into custody for crossing the border illegally or for other reasons, such as concern over safety of the child.
Of that group, approximately 100 children are under the age of five he said on Thursday.
To speed the reunification process, the Department of Homeland Security is relocating parents of children under five years old to detention facilities close to their children "so that we can as expeditiously as possible reunite the children with their parents to meet the court's deadline", Azar said.
No children have yet been reunified with parents in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but that will soon happen to meet the court deadline, Azar said.
Government personnel are currently collecting cheek swab DNA samples from parents and children in order to verify family relationships, said Jonathan White, deputy director for children's programs at the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the HHS office that takes care of the children.
White described the DNA process as faster than verifying relationships through documents such as birth certificates.
"We have to protect children from people who would prey on them, and that is what we are doing," he said. "These DNA results are being used solely for that purpose and no other."
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, which filed a lawsuit challenging the family separations, questioned the government's contention it might need more time to safely reunite families.
"When the government wants to marshal its resources to separate families, it has shown that it can do it quickly and efficiently, but when told to reunite families, it somehow finds it too difficult and cumbersome to accomplish," he said.
