The Latest on immigrant parents and children separated at the U.S. border (all times local):
9:12 p.m.
A judge in California has ordered U.S. border authorities to reunite separated families within 30 days.
If the children are younger than 5, they must be reunified within 14 days of the order, issued Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego issued the order in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The lawsuit 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.
Sabraw also issued a nationwide injunction on future family separations, unless the parent is deemed unfit.
More than 2,000 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks and placed in government-contracted shelters. President Donald Trump last week issued an executive order to stop the separation of families and said parents and children will instead be detained together.
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4:25 p.m.
A Houston-based shelter for “tender age” immigrant children being separated from their parents is one step closer to opening.
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission said Tuesday that it has received enough information from the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs to conduct an inspection of the proposed shelter for young kids.
Houston’s mayor has said the shelter would house up to 240 children in a warehouse previously used for Hurricane Harvey evacuees.
A spokeswoman for the commission says it has three weeks to do the inspection and two months to decide whether to issue a permit to Southwest Key.
Southwest Key’s operation of shelters has come under new scrutiny because of the Trump administration’s separation of families at the U.S.-Mexico border. The group is caring for more than 600 children taken from their parents. Of those, 152 are younger than 5.
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4 p.m.
Mexico Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray says that his country’s government will propose a resolution before the Organization of American States on Friday condemning the United States’ policy of separating children from parents who have entered the country illegally.
The administration of President Donald Trump reversed course on that policy after outrage from opponents and his own party, but it is still working on how to reunite parents separated from their children.
In a statement Tuesday, Videgaray said he hoped that other countries in the region would support Mexico’s proposed resolution. It will also ask the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to institute protection measures if it sees fit.
It says Videgaray considers the policy “cruel, inhumane, unjustified and a violation of human rights.”
Videgaray says, “we’re worried about what is going to happen with the children that are still detained, in spite of being accompanied by their parents, and in general the situation of children not only Mexican, but also of other nationalities, who are subjected to a violation of their fundamental rights.”
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2:30 p.m.
The chief executive of the nation’s largest shelters for migrant children says he fears a lack of urgency by the U.S. government could mean it will take months to reunite thousands of immigrant children with their parents.
Juan Sanchez of the nonprofit Southwest Key Programs said Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press that the government has no process in place to speed the return of children separated from their parents as part of the Trump administration’s recent “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
Sanchez says Southwest Key is “ready today” to help reunite children, but the group is limited in what it can do because many parents’ cases will likely have to make their way through the legal system.
During Congressional testimony, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar declined to be pinned down on how long it would take to reunite families.
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2:15 p.m.
Several dozen protesters gathered in North Carolina’s capital to demand that President Donald Trump’s administration swiftly reunite immigrant families separated at the border.
Organizers of the protest Tuesday at the Terry Sanford Federal Building in Raleigh say they also want to get the attention of elected officials such as Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis. They want North Carolina politicians to push back on Trump administration immigration policies.
The protesters gathered outside a building that houses federal courtrooms and one of Tillis’ offices.
Demonstrators held signs with messages including “Dreamers Make America Great” and “Oust GOP Trump Enablers.”
Organizer Karen Ziegler said their goal is to keep pressure on the Trump administration to reunite immigrant children housed separately from their parents.
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2:10 p.m.
A Brazilian woman has filed a federal lawsuit demanding the release of her 9-year-old son who’s being detained in Chicago after the two were separated at the border.
The lawsuit filed Tuesday says Lidia Karine Souza was released from detention on June 9 after arriving in the U.S. last month seeking asylum. Souza is now staying with family in Massachusetts, but her son remains detained.
The lawsuit says that because of paperwork the earliest the two will be reunited is late July. Souza’s lawyers say the delay is “unacceptable, unnecessary and unconstitutional.”
President Donald Trump signed an…
