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A federal judge on Monday temporarily halted the deportations of families that have been recently reunited after being separated by the Trump administration. San Diego-based Judge Dana Sabraw granted a request from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) at the top of a status hearing on the administration’s efforts to reunite children over 5 years old with their parents. (Weixel, 7/16)

Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego granted a request to allow families extra time to discuss the “momentous” and “exceedingly complex” decision of whether to leave the United States or continue to fight their immigration cases. Normally, families would have days or weeks to consider such a decision, but the separation of families and the rush to reunite them in response to an earlier court order has rendered such discussions difficult for most. (7/16)

In a court filing, the ACLU argued that giving families a week together would allow them time to decide what’s best for them, whether the children should stay to push ahead with their own immigration cases or go back to their home countries with their parents. “It’s hard to imagine a decision more profound and momentous that parents have to make,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney in the case for the ACLU. (Morrissey, 7/16)

Judge Sabraw said Mr. Meekins’s filing suggests that HHS wants to continue treating separated children by the same standards as immigrant children who have arrived at the U.S. border on their own. Under a federal law governing the care and custody of such immigrants, HHS officials generally hold children for weeks or even months until a sponsor can be found and vetted by the government. Reuniting separated children, Judge Sabraw said, should be a much faster process since they arrived with their parents. “It is failing in this context,” the judge said. “Mr. Meekins wants to hold children for months. The problem with that is it doesn’t comport with fundamental due right process.” (Caldwell, 7/16)

Sendy Karina Ferrera Amaya opened her mouth, and a gloved hand gave each cheek a perfunctory brush with a cotton swab. Fifteen seconds, and the $429 DNA test she’d paid for was over. “Eso es todo,” the lab technician said last Thursday. That was it. Ferrera, 25, gave a tentative smile and walked out to join her fiancé. Squeezing his hand as they drove away, she allowed herself to hope. To imagine her curly-haired 1-year-old daughter wrapped in her arms, much bigger and more wiggly than last time she held her. Maybe next week, she would finally be reunited with Liah, whose name she wore around her neck like a talisman. (Surana, 7/16)

It started in this southeast neighborhood last fall, not long after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers raided Baltimore and other “sanctuary cities.” In October, a popular 16-year-old Mexican-American boy died by suicide at home. The next month, a 42-year-old mother from El Salvador told her husband and two daughters to go Christmas shopping without her — a puzzling request for a family who liked to shop together. When they returned home, they found that their wife and mother had killed herself. (Henderson, 7/17)