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Father: Girl On Time Cover Is With Her Mother

Posted at 2:05 PM, Jun 22, 2018
and last updated 2018-06-22 14:05:22-04

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):
    
1 p.m.
    
The father of the girl who is pictured crying on the cover of this week’s Time magazine says the Honduran foreign ministry told him that his daughter is detained with her mother in McAllen, Texas, and the two have not been separated.
    
Denis Varela says he hasn’t heard from his wife or daughter in almost three weeks. The girl’s mother apparently took their daughter to the United States without telling him.
    
Varela, a dockworker who lives in Puerto Cortes, Honduras, said that the ministry had given him the girl’s detainee identification number. He was told his daughter was in McAllen with her mother, but nothing else.
    
The girl’s photo was apparently taken when she and her mother were first detained by Border Patrol officers and the mother was being searched.
    
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12:50 p.m.
    
A coalition of progressives in Nevada upset with the Trump administration’s immigration policy is urging a national association of school-based law enforcement officers to withdraw its invitation to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions to speak at a school safety conference in Reno next week.
    
Sessions is scheduled to address the National Association of School Resource Officers at a Reno hotel-casino on Monday.
    
Leaders of more than a dozen labor unions, women’s, religious and minority groups sent a letter Thursday asking the association to rescind its invitation to Sessions because of the administration’s stand on immigration.
    
They said "rolling out the welcome mat to Sessions" would demonstrate complicity with his support for the "zero tolerance" policy of separating migrant parents and children at the U.S. border.
    
Spokesman Jay Farlow of the Alabama-based association had no immediate comment.
    
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11:50 a.m.
    
Four Democratic state lawmakers from Kansas are demanding that Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer be more aggressive in seeking answers about immigrant children housed in northeast Kansas group homes.
    
They accused Colyer Friday of being passive about getting information about reports that some children separated from their parents are being housed by the nonprofit agency The Villages.
    
Colyer spokesman Kendall Marr said the federal government didn’t notify the administration of its plans and the state has sought information.
    
The Villages confirmed Thursday that it has a federal contract to house 50 unaccompanied immigrant children at seven group homes in Topeka and Lawrence.
    
But it would not say whether any of them had been separated from their parents during recent crackdown at the border.
    
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11:30 a.m.
    
A lawyer says Friday has marked the first time since May 24 that no parents charged with crossing border illegally in the McAllen, Texas area had been separated from their kids.
    
Efren Olivares of the Texas Civil Rights Project advocacy group has been interviewing adult immigrants to track them and their children through separate government processing systems.
    
Olivares says the development Friday at the federal court in McAllen appears to be "a consequence of a change in policy by the government."
    
A senior Trump administration official told The Associated Press that about 500 of the more than 2,300 children separated from their parents had been reunited since May.
    
Olivares says his group has had contact with 381 parents separated from their children, and that none had confirmed being reunited.
    
He says some children were successfully placed with sponsors, including relatives in the U.S.
    
– Colleen Long in Washington.
    
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10:30 a.m.
    
The U.N human rights office says President Donald Trump’s decision to stop the U.S. policy separating migrant parents from their children doesn’t go far enough.
    
A Trump executive order ended the policy of separations. Families will still be detained, just together.
    
Human rights office spokeswoman Ravini Shamdasani said Friday that "children should never be detained for reasons related to their or their parents’ migration status."
    
Shamdasani urged the U.S. to overhaul its migration policy, such as by relying on "non-custodial and community-based alternatives" under the "logic of care" rather than that of law enforcement.
    
Also Friday, a group of nearly a dozen independent human rights experts commissioned by the U.N. said the new U.S. policy "may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards."
    
10:25 a.m.
    
U.S. officials have allowed journalists to tour a South Florida facility housing more than 1,000 teen-age migrants but did not let them take photos or record video during the visit.
    
Private contractors who run the center for unaccompanied minors in Homestead, Fla., showed journalists around the campus like-complex for about an hour.
    
The complex includes dorm-style buildings where children sleep up to 12 per room in steel-framed bunk beds, and warehouse-sized, air-conditioned white tents where minors attend classes and watch movies.
    
The children could be seen walking to the dining hall and classes, wearing government-issued cotton T-shirts and gym shorts. Some could be seen playing basketball and soccer, sometimes shouting and laughing.
    
Program director Leslie Wood said fewer than 70 of the 1,179 children had been separated from families at the border.
    
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8:40 a.m.
    
A coalition of civil rights and student advocacy groups has sued the Boston Public Schools to find out how much student information the system shares with federal immigration officials.
    
The groups, including the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights and Economic Justice, allege in the suit that the school system and Superintendent Tommy Chang have a "disturbing practice" of giving student information to immigration authorities.
    
The suit stems from the deportation of an East Boston High School student. The suit says evidence used by federal officials in deportation proceedings included a school report about two students who tried unsuccessfully to start a fight.
    
Chang has in the past said the schools don’t share student information.
    
A schools spokesman said he could not comment because the system had not been served with the suit.
    
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5:15 a.m.
    
A 7-year-old boy and his migrant mother who had been separated a month ago have been reunited after she sued in federal court and the Justice Department agreed to release the child.
    
The two were reunited at about 2:30 a.m. Friday at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland, hours after a Justice Department lawyer told a U.S. District Court judge the child would be released.
    
The mother, Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, had filed for political asylum after crossing the border with her son, Darwin, following a trek from Guatemala. She said she started crying when the two were reunited and that she’s never going to be away from him again.
    
Darwin said he was content and happy with the reunion.
    
The mother and son were to travel to Texas, where they will live while her asylum claim is being decided.
    
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2:25 a.m.
    
Immigration enforcement on the U.S.-Mexico border was plunged deeper into chaos over President Donald Trump’s reversal of a policy separating immigrant children from parents.
    
A senior Trump administration official says about 500 of the more than 2,300 children separated from their families at the border have been reunited since May. It was unclear how many of the children were still being detained with their families.
    
The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
    
In the Texas border city of McAllen, federal prosecutors unexpectedly did not pursue charges against 17 immigrants. One said "there was no prosecution sought" in light of Trump’s executive order ending the practice of separating families.
    
But the president showed no sign of softening in public remarks.

(Copyright 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved