[S]en. Patrick Leahy and 40 of his Democratic colleagues have signed on to a bill by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that aims to end family separation at the border.
The Keep Families Together Act ensures that children can only be separated from their parents in cases of trafficking or abuse. The bill also requires that every separation recommendation be reviewed by a superior officer and that a child welfare expert be consulted before it can proceed.
“The fact that a bill preventing the administration from ripping children away from their parents even needs to be introduced is a damning indictment of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant policies,” Leahy said in a statement. “The family separation policy is morally abhorrent, undermines American values, and is likely in violation of U.S. and international law. This legislation is necessary to ensure this disgraceful policy never happens again.”
Vermont’s independent senator, Bernie Sanders, is also a co-sponsor.
The legislation follows a January report from the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general that found there may have been thousands more children separated from their parents than the originally reported 2,737 cases. The report also noted hundreds of cases of family separation that continued even after a federal judge had barred the practice on June 26, 2018.
Leahy signed onto a very similar bill from Feinstein in June 2018, which expired at the end of the last Congress, prompting this second generation of the bill to be introduced for the current session.
“Senator Leahy was, as many were, very concerned about the administration’s handling of the separations and these kinds of policies,” said David Carle, the senator’s communication director. “And there’s now a Democratic House of Representatives that would be more receptive to those concerns.”
Carle said although making progress on immigration reform has been “extremely difficult” under Trump, that doesn’t make it any less important to reach a bipartisan consensus, especially on the issue of family separation.
“I would also just flag that the opposition to family separation is truly a bipartisan effort, even though this is a Democrat-only bill, this is a policy area that has a keen interest on both sides of the aisle,” said Rajiv Venkataramanan, senior counsel to the senator.
