Judge orders top Trump administration officials answer for family seperation policy

[Eugene]

Source: Salon

Judge orders top Trump administration officials answer for family seperation policy

Gabriella Ferrigine
Wed, September 27, 2023 at 1:52 PM EDT·3 min read

Two Trump-era administration officials have been mandated to testify as part of a lawsuit filed against the U.S. government for separating migrant children under the age of 18 from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Federal magistrate judge Kandis Westmore of California on Monday issued a decision telling the Justice Department and attorneys for the affected families to meet in order to slot depositions for former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions and former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The suit, filed in 2021 by three families from El Salvador and Guatemala, alleges that the parents were separated from their children — then ages 6, 11, and 13 — and spent several weeks in detention centers before being reunited.

Westmore in her ruling wrote that Sessions and Nielsen had "unique personal knowledge of their own intent" in enforcing such a stringent policy, adding that while the Department of Justice initially touted the zero-tolerance rule as fomented by "dozens of people," the government ultimately conceded that the duo alone had been responsible for structuring the policy as such, a fact which the judge said left her "disappointed." Records show that Sessions and Nielsen approved the documents that catalyzed the separations, according to the Washington Post.

"Such an injustice cannot stand," Westmore wrote.

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Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/judge-orders-top-trump-administration-175250492.html

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