Family Separation Deal May Give Migrants Second Chance at Asylum

(Bloomberg) -- The Trump administration and the American Civil Liberties Union struck a deal that’ll let many families separated at the southern U.S. border stay in the country and pursue asylum.

The ACLU has been seeking a longterm halt to the deportation of scores of immigrant parents and children who were separated as a result of the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance" policy. The U.S. had told a judge such a halt hinders the work of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Under the agreement reached overnight, some parents who have already been deported may be able to return to the U.S. to seek asylum, said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant’s Rights Project.

“The Trump administration will never be able to erase the full damage of its family separation policy, but this agreement is an important step toward restoring and protecting the asylum rights of impacted children and parents going forward,” he said in a statement Thursday.

The deal must be approved by a judge, and the two sides are scheduled to be in court Friday for a hearing.

To contact the reporter on this story: Patricia Hurtado in Federal Court in Manhattan at pathurtado@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth

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