A senior Justice Department official says President Donald Trump’s executive order is a stopgap measure to end the separation of families as they cross the border illegally and face criminal prosecution.
The Latest on President Donald Trump and immigration (all times local):
5:40 p.m.
A senior Justice Department official says President Donald Trump’s executive order is a stopgap measure to end the separation of families as they cross the border illegally and face criminal prosecution.
Gene Hamilton, the Counselor to the Attorney General, says Homeland Security officials can only detain families for up to 20 days. He says that hasn’t changed, but lawyers will file a challenge to a settlement that governs how children caught at the border are treated. He says they will ask the judge to allow for detention of families indefinitely.
Trump signed an order Wednesday that prioritized cases of families who cross the border illegally, and directed Homeland Security officials to detain them together.
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5:35 p.m.
A spokesman says the Health and Human Services Department is paying up to $775 a day per child to house some migrant children.
Ken Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, said that’s the average estimated cost for children in temporary shelters. The cost isn’t related to whether the children were separated from parents, but to the type of federal facility they’re in.
Wolfe says permanent shelters cost less, $256 a day per child.
Temporary shelters cost more because they must be set up in short order.
HHS is caring for about 11,800 migrant children, of which about 8 in 10 arrived without a parent.
Kids are in HHS custody typically about 60 days before being placed with a sponsor, usually a parent or relative.
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5:30 p.m.
New York City’s mayor has toured a children’s center in Harlem that he says is caring for 239 migrant children separated from their parents by federal immigration officials.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said after the tour Wednesday that one of the children at the center is a 9-year-old boy from Honduras who had been sent 2,000 miles to the facility on a bus after being stopped trying to enter the U. S. with his family.
The Democrat says he didn’t know until that morning that such large numbers of children taken from their parents were being brought to New York.
The Cayuga Center has classrooms in a six-story building across the street from an elevated train line.
It has a federal contract to place unaccompanied immigrant children in short-term foster care.
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5:20 p.m.
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar says his agency will start reuniting detained immigrant children with their parents — but he’s making no specific commitment on how quickly that can be accomplished.
“We need to get the children out of our care as expeditiously as possible,” Azar said Wednesday on the Washington Post’s Health 202 webcast.
HHS says it is caring for about 11,800 migrant children, but the majority arrived at the U. S. border without parents or another adult. It says about 2,300 were separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Azar says his agency is in touch with the parents, but some parents whose children were taken away say they have had trouble reaching their kids through a special phone number provided by the government.
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5:05 p.m.
A liberal advocacy group says President Donald Trump’s decision to reverse his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border doesn’t go far enough.
The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center says the administration still plans to treat families like criminals by holding them in detention facilities.
A statement from the president of the organization, Richard Cohen, says there are other alternatives available. And it says indiscriminate enforcement is “shattering” communities across the country.
Trump signed an order that doesn’t end the “zero-tolerance” policy that criminally prosecutes any adult caught crossing the border illegally. But it does make changes that include keeping families together while they are in custody.
The Southern Poverty Law Center monitors extremism and is often critical of Trump policies.
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3:25 p.m.
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis says the Pentagon will “respond if requested” to house migrants detained after crossing the U. S.-Mexico border illegally.
When a reporter noted that federal agencies have assessed four military bases for potential use as temporary housing for detained migrants, including unaccompanied children, Mattis said the Pentagon will “support whatever” the Department of Homeland Security says it needs. In the meantime, he said, this is not a matter for the Pentagon to comment on.
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3:10 p.m.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to keep families together at the southern border, saying at the White House that he doesn’t like the sight of children being separated from their families.
He said, “We are keeping families together.”
But the president added the “zero tolerance” policy will continue.
Vice President Mike Pence added that they are calling upon Congress to change the laws. Trump adds that the word “compassion” comes into it.
Trump has been trying to win over congressional support on immigration amid a crisis along the border involving the separation of immigrant children from their families.
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3:05 p.m.
Several Latin American countries are strongly criticizing the U. S. policy of separating children from families after they are detained crossing the U. S. border illegally.
Mexico, Venezuela, Chile, Guatemala and Honduras are voicing their disapproval at a meeting of the Organization of the American States, or OAS, in Washington.
Mexican Ambassador Jorge Lomonaco is calling the policy “cruel” and “inhumane.” He says Mexico will host a meeting Friday with officials from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to discuss the situation.
OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro is recommending that the regional bloc’s human rights commission visit the Mexico-U. S. border to investigate.
President Donald Trump said he will sign an executive order Wednesday to stop the process of separating children from their families.
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1:30 p.m.
First Lady Melania Trump “has been making her opinion known” to her husband that he needs to do all he can to keep families of migrants together.
A White House official says the First Lady has been encouraging President Donald Trump “for some time now,” to “do all he could to help families stay together, whether it was by working with Congress or anything he could do on his own.”
Trump said Wednesday he would sign an executive order to end family separation at the border, reversing his insistence this week that Congress had to act to solve the growing crisis.
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1:00 p.m.
American Airlines says it asked the Trump administration not to put migrant children who have been separated from their parents on its flights.
In a statement Wednesday, American said it doesn’t know whether any migrant children have been on its flights and doesn’t want to profit from the current immigration policy of separating families.
American and other airlines have contracts to provide travel services to the U. S. government. American says, however, that the government doesn’t provide information about the passengers or their reason for travel.
