There were tears of joy and tears of anguish as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reunited 34 of the 102 children under 5 it had been ordered to return to their parents by Tuesday. (Four other kids had been returned to their parents before Tuesday.) And the federal judge who set the deadline, Dana Sabraw, was not amused. "These are firm deadlines, they're not aspirational goals," he told government lawyers. He asked an ACLU lawyer to propose punishments if the government missed the Tuesday deadline for at least 63 children and the July 26 deadline to reunite parents with the roughly 3,000 older children U.S. border agents forcibly separated under President Trump's "zero tolerance" policy.
The Department of Health and Human Services, which provided the 34-returned-children number, blamed safety concerns for the delay, saying it found parents with criminal backgrounds and five adults who DNA tests showed were not the child's parent. In a court filing Tuesday, the Justice Department gave other extenuating circumstances, including one young child who can't be returned because the whereabouts of his parents are unknown and "records show the parent and child might be U.S. citizens." Judge Sabraw wasn't swayed, conceding only that it would take more time to reunite the 20 children whose parents had already been deported.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Why some people remember dreams and others don'tUnder The Radar Age, attitude and weather all play a part in dream recall
-
The Week contest: Hotel sealPuzzles and Quizzes
-
New FBI Director Kash Patel could profit heavily from foreign interestsThe Explainer Patel holds more than $1 million in Chinese fashion company Shein
-
Trump seeks to end New York's congestion pricingSpeed Read The MTA quickly filed a lawsuit to stop the move
-
Trump officials try to reverse DOGE-led firingsSpeed Read Mass firings by Elon Musk's team have included employees working on the H5N1 bird flu epidemic and US nuclear weapons programs
-
Trump blames Ukraine for war after US-Russia talksSpeed Read The US and Russia have agreed to work together on ending the Ukraine war — but President Trump has flipped America's approach
-
Musk's DOGE seeks access to IRS, Social Security filesSpeed Read If cleared, the Department of Government Efficiency would have access to tax returns, bank records and other highly personal information about most Americans
-
Senate confirms RFK Jr. as health secretarySpeed Read The noted vaccine skeptic is now in charge of America's massive public health system
-
Trump lays out plans for broad 'reciprocal' tariffsSpeed Read Tariffs imposed on countries that are deemed to be treating the US unfairly could ignite a global trade war and worsen American inflation
-
Top US prosecutors resign rather than drop Adams casespeed read The interim US attorney for the Southern District and five senior Justice Department officials quit following an order to drop the charges against Mayor Eric Adams
-
Senate confirms Gabbard as intelligence chiefSpeed Read The controversial former Democratic lawmaker, now Trump loyalist, was sworn in as director of national intelligence
