CHICAGO — Attorney General Lisa Madigan, along with 10 other attorneys general, announced Thursday she is filing a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's policy of forced family separation on the U.S. southern border.
"The new federal executive order does not bring back together the thousands of families that were torn apart by the federal government's policy, and it does not prevent families from being separated in the future," Madigan said. "I will join with my colleagues across the country to bring action against the federal government for this inhumane and unAmerican policy."
The lawsuit will allege that the administration's family separation policy violates the fundamental due process rights of parents to be with their children, as well as other constitutional and statutory claims, Madigan's office says. The states will ask the court to order the federal administration to immediately comply with the law beginning with correcting the egregious flaws in his executive order and creating a process to reunify the thousands of families torn apart by his cruel and unconstitutional policy.
Madigan and the coalition of state attorneys general said they see two main problems with Trump's executive order signed Wednesday.
"First, the order does nothing to reunify families already torn apart by the federal administration's policy. Second, the order is riddled with so many caveats that it is rendered meaningless. Specifically, the order requires appropriations, although the total amount is unknown, and the timeline for when or if such an appropriation would happen," Madigan's office said. "It also relies on a federal judge approving a plan to indefinitely detain children, which is an unlikely scenario, and, in any event, would also raise serious legal issues."
On April 6, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new so-called "zero tolerance" policy on the U.S. southern border. The federal administration has been clear that the purpose of the forced separation policy is not to protect children, but rather to deter potential immigrants from coming to the U.S.
In practice, this meant that instead of making case-specific evaluations of individual cases, respecting due process rights and family integrity, the federal administration began prosecuting all possible immigration crimes, accusing and detaining all adults, even those with a legitimate asylum claim. The intended and acknowledged effect of this policy has been the separation of parents and children at the border.
Notably, there is no such "zero tolerance" policy at the northern border, and recent reporting indicates that the Border Patrol only tracks "family unit apprehensions" for immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico, Madigan said in a statement.
Joining Madigan in filing the lawsuit are the attorneys general of California, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington.
