17 states sue Trump administration over family separations
Seventeen US states led by Democratic attorneys general have sued the administration of President Donald Trump over separating immigrant parents from their children.
The states joined Washington DC on Tuesday in filing the lawsuit in US District Court in Seattle, the first legal challenge over the practice.
"The administration's practice of separating families is cruel, plain and simple," New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said in an emailed statement. "Every day, it seems like the administration is issuing new, contradictory policies and relying on new, contradictory justifications. But we can't forget: the lives of real people hang in the balance."
This comes after Trump, who blamed Democrats for the separations, issued an executive order last week, ending the practice under his "zero tolerance" policy.
The states, however, argue that Trump’s order is full of caveats and fails to reunite parents and children, insisting his administration denies the parents and children due process; denies the immigrants their right to seek asylum; and is arbitrary in applying the policy.
The 17 states include Massachusetts, California, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
Meanwhile, a federal judge on Tuesday ruled that US immigration authorities could no longer separate immigrant parents and children arrested while crossing the border from Mexico illegally.
US District Court Judge Dana Sabraw granted the American Civil Liberties Union a preliminary injunction in a lawsuit filed over the family separations.
Nearly 2,300 children have been separated from their parents in recent weeks. Parents are being kept in custody thousands of miles from their children, whom they have not seen and have rarely spoken to for a month or more.
Heartbreaking images and audio of children crying for their loved ones have stoked outrage across the political spectrum in the United States and abroad.
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