Thread by @ACLU

Today @leegelernt, lead attorney in our family separation lawsuit, will testify before Congress in an appropriately titled hearing on "Examining the failures of the Trump administration's inhumane family separation policy."

There are many.

Tune in:

No other administration has implemented a widespread policy to take migrant children away from their parents indefinitely, in an illegal effort to deter asylum seekers from seeking refuge.

A reminder on where we're at in the fight against family separation — thread/

In the fall of 2017, we began to see reporting and hear from our partners that the Trump administration was separating immigrant children and parents in large numbers — even as administration officials repeatedly claimed that there was no family separation policy.

We filed a class action in March 2018. In June, the court ordered the practice be halted and the kids reunited.

We were told there were about 2,700 separated families. Nearly one year later, the process of reunifying them is still not complete.

The government has resisted reunification at every step. It missed deadlines for a substantial number of families.

At one point, @HHSgov even wanted to make parents to pay for children's flights, because the agency didn't have a budget line for reunification expenses.

We know at least 400 parents were deported without their children. Many were misled or coerced into giving up their asylum claims.

The government tried to wash its hands, even saying that if we wanted to find these parents we should use our own "considerable resources" to do so.

Thankfully the court rejected the idea that the administration wasn't responsible.

The judge said it best: "The reality is that for every parent who is not located, there will be a permanently orphaned child. And that is 100 percent the responsibility of the administration."

It's only been through litigation, advocacy, and countless hours spent by partners and NGOs tracking down parents, that we've been able to reunite more than 2,500 families.

The work still isn't over.

Last month a government report revealed there may have been thousands of additional, unreported, separated families.

Last week the administration said they have no adequate system to find out how many families it ripped apart — and they don't think it's worth the time to try.

The Trump administration is refusing to take the necessary steps to bring families back together again, or even to figure out the true scope of the human rights crisis that they created.

The cruelty is shocking.

What's worse, separations are still happening.

Even after the court's order blocking the policy, the government has continued to unilaterally declare parents a danger to their child that they can take them away, without any oversight.

The sheer number of children separated tell only part of the story. There is simply no way to quantify the depth of trauma that the administration has caused.

To protect these families and prevent future separations, Congressional oversight is critical. Here are five steps: