GENEVA (22 June 2018) - The executive order signed by the US President on 20 June 2018 fails to address the situation of thousands of migrant children forcibly separated from their parents and held in detention at the border, UN experts* said. In addition, it may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards, they said. 
 
 “This executive order does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents. We call on the Government of the US to release these children from immigration detention and to reunite them with their families based on the best interests of the child, and the rights of the child to liberty and family unity,” the experts said. 
 
 “Detention of children is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture,” the experts said. “Children are being used as a deterrent to irregular migration, which is unacceptable.” 
 
 The UN experts have already expressed to the US Government their grave concerns over the impact of the zero-tolerance policy signed by the Attorney General on 6 April 2018. As a result of the new policy, parents travelling with their children, including asylum-seeking families, were automatically separated and subjected to criminal prosecution as a punitive deterrent from migrating to the United States. 
 
 “The separations have been conducted without notice, information, or the opportunity to challenge them. The parents and children have been unable to communicate with each other. The parents have had no information about the whereabouts of their children, which is a cause of great distress. Moreover, we are deeply concerned at the long-term impact and trauma, including irreparable harm that these forcible separations will have on the children.” 
 
 The UN experts noted that some of them are children with disabilities and need specialized support. Some have been taken from their breastfeeding mothers. 
 
 The lack of proper registration makes the tracking and ultimate reunification of these children particularly challenging. There are also legitimate fears that some children may never be reunited with their parents as they are sent to different parts of the United States while their parents may have been deported. 
 
 Most of the migrants detained are asylum seekers from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, who have fled their countries because of insecurity, violence and violations of their human rights. The vast majority of these migrants are indigenous peoples or belong to ethnic or racial groups that are categorized as non-white in the United States. Thus, the executive order’s effect on children and their families is devastation reserved largely for indigenous and other non-white migrants. 
 
 “The best interests of the child should be the paramount consideration, including in the context of migration management, and children should never be detained for reasons related to their own or their parents’ migration status,” the experts said. 
 
 The experts also expressed concern about the lack of due process guarantees for asylum seekers and other vulnerable migrants, such as victims or potential victims of trafficking, who seek protection in the US, in possible violation of the principle of non-refoulement, lacking proper individual assessment, and at risk of deportations that result in further family separation. 
 
 “Migrant children need to be treated first and foremost as children. While family unity needs to be preserved at all costs, it cannot be done at the expense of detaining entire families with children. Family-based alternatives to deprivation of liberty must be adopted urgently,” the experts said. 
 
 
 
 ENDS 
 
 (*) UN experts: Felipe González Morales, Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants; Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples; Catalina Devandas, Special Rapporteur on the rights of persons with disabilities; Maud de Boer-Buquicchio, Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children; Nils Melzer, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; Dainius Pῡras, Special Rapporteur on the right to health; Maria Grazia Giammarinaro, Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children; Seong-Phil Hong, Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Ivana Radačić , Chairperson of the Working Group on the issue of discrimination against women in law and in practice; Dubravka Šimonović, Special Rapporteur on violence against women; and E. Tendayi Achiume, Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. 
 
 Special Rapporteurs are part of what is known as the Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council. Special Procedures, the largest body of independent experts in the UN Human Rights system, is the general name of the Council’s independent fact-finding and monitoring mechanisms that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world. Special Procedures’ experts work on a voluntary basis; they are not UN staff and do not receive a salary for their work. They are independent from any government or organization and serve in their individual capacity. 
 
 For further information and media requests, please contact Nekane Lavín (+41 22 917 94 02 / lavin@ohchr.org) 
 
 UN Human Rights, country page: United States of America 
 
 For media inquiries related to other UN independent experts please contact 
 
 Jeremy Laurence, UN Human Rights – Media Unit (+41 22 917 9383 / jlaurence@ohchr.org) 
 
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 / Updated By Alex Johnson 
 
 A federal judge in San Diego ordered immigration agents on Tuesday to stop separating migrant parents and children who have crossed the border from Mexico and to work to reunite families that have already been split up while in custody. 
 
 U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw issued a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed by an anonymous woman from the Democratic Republic of Congo and backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which pursued it as a class action as U.S. authorities began a "zero tolerance" policy in early May. 
 
 President Donald Trump issued an executive order to end the family separations last Wednesday, but the government has yet to reunite about 2,000 children with their parents. 
 
 Trump said last week that the order would "solve that problem" of children being separated from their parents, and government lawyers argued that he had "largely" addressed the issue. But Sabraw wrote that statements submitted by the government show that the order was intended to reunite families only "after the parent's immigration case is concluded" so they can "be deported together." 
 
 The order "is silent on the issue of reuniting families that have already been separated or will be separated in the future," he wrote. 
 
 Moreover, he wrote, "the record also reflects that the practice of family separation was occurring before the zero tolerance policy was announced, and that practice has resulted in the casual, if not deliberate, separation of families that lawfully present at the port of entry, not just those who cross into the country illegally." 
 
 And he zeroed in on a provision of the order intended to let the government continue to separate migrant families when "there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the child's alien parent would pose a risk to the child’s welfare." 
 
 Sabraw called that standard "subjective" and wrote, "Objective standards are necessary, not subjective ones, particularly in light of the history of this case" 
 
 The injunction orders immigration agents to: 
 
 Stop separating parents and children without an objective finding that a parent is unfit. 
 
 Reunify families with children under age 5 within 14 days. 
 
 Reunify families with children 5 years old and older within 30 days. 
 
 Let parents speak with their children by telephone within 10 days. 
 
 "The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance — responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making," he wrote. "They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution." 
 
 Sabraw, who was appointed to the district court by President George W. Bush, had said in earlier proceedings in the case that the government's policy "tears at the sacred bond between parent and child." 
 
 Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, who argued the case, called Sabraw's ruling "an enormous victory for parents and children who thought they may never see each other again." 
 
 "Tears will be flowing in detention centers across the country when the families learn they will be reunited," he said in a statement. 
 
 A status conference was set for July 6.
– The United Nations had already called the separations of immigrant children from their parents at the US border "arbitrary and unlawful," and now the intergovernmental group is labeling them something else: possible torture. Per the Independent, the UN's human rights arm issued a statement Friday noting that the executive order President Trump signed Wednesday to address the issue of the separations didn't go far enough, notably in reuniting children who've already been pulled away from their parents. "We call on the Government of the US to release these children from immigration detention and to reunite them with their families based on the best interests of the child, and the rights of the child to liberty and family unity," the experts cited in the statement say. The best interests of the child, those experts add, aren't being served by separating them from their parents, especially kids who have special needs or are still breastfeeding. "Detention of children is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture," the experts say. "Children are being used as a deterrent to irregular migration, which is unacceptable." Other concerns include that asylum seekers may not be getting a fair shake in applying for help, and that messy red tape means it may be difficult, if not impossible, to reunite all the separated families. The UN experts also aren't on board with keeping families together but detained. "While family unity needs to be preserved at all costs, it cannot be done at the expense of detaining entire families with children," the experts note. "Family-based alternatives to deprivation of liberty must be adopted urgently."