Family detention timeline

Compiled by the staff of the Corporate Responsibility office of the Benedictine Sisters, Boerne,Texas

• July 24, 2015 … Judge Dolly Gee, Central District of California ruled current U.S. family detention policies violate 1997 Flores Settlement, which set standards for detention, release, treatment of all immigrant children in detention.
• August 21, 2015 … Judge Gee ordered the swift release of immigrant children held in detention centers, giving the Administration until October 23, 2015 to comply.
• December 6, 2016 … District Judge Karin Crump ruled that the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services could not license the facilities in Dilley and Karnes City (operated by CoreCivic and Geo Group, respectively) as child care centers.
• May 7, 2017 … Gov. Greg Abbott signed a ban on sanctuary cities into law.  
• June 1, 2017 … The City of San Antonio, the City of Austin and Bexar County joined with Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) in a federal lawsuit to stop SB4 from being implemented. Federal Judge Orlando Garcia ordered the consolidation of SB4 lawsuits into one federal case.
• August 10, 2017 … A district judge in Austin rejected an effort by Texas to have a law that would punish so-called sanctuary cities be declared constitutional. District Judge Sam Sparks, dismissed the case without prejudice. 
• August 30, 2017 … U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia halted most of Texas’ ban on sanctuary cities.
• September 5, 2017 ... President Donald Trump scrapped Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).
• January 10, 2018 … U.S. District Judge William Alsup’s decision to block the Trump’s administration plan to phase out protections for “dreamers”, states that safeguards against deportation must remain in place for the nearly 690,000 DACA recipients.
• March 5, 2018 … Attorney General Jeff Sessions wrote a memo declaring DACA unconstitutional, Homeland Security Department officials in September announced that anyone whose DACA permit expired before March 5 had one month to apply for a renewal.
• April 24, 2018 … Federal judge John D. Bates of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that DACA protections must stay in place and that the government must resume accepting new applications.
• May 7, 2018 … Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a “zero-tolerance” policy that would prosecute parents who crossed the U.S. border illegally with their children.
• May 28, 2018 … Steven Wagner, a top official with the Department of Health and Human Services, told a Senate panel that the agency had lost track of 1,475 children it placed with sponsors between October and December 2017. He testified at the hearing on April 26 that ORR tried to reach 7,635 children and their sponsors during that time frame. The agency found 6,075 children were still with their sponsors, 28 had run away, five had been deported and 52 were living with someone else. “ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475” children, Wagner said.
• May 29, 2018 … US Department of Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan called reports that the agency has lost nearly 1,500 immigrant children false and misleading.
• June 11, 2018 … Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that individuals who are victims of private crime, including domestic and gang violence, in their home country will no longer automatically qualify for asylum in the U.S.
• June 29, 2018 … U.S. District Court Judge Dana M. Sabraw in San Diego issued a preliminary injunction ordering the government to quickly reunite migrant children with their parents, saying that children separated from their families must be returned within 30 days, and allowing just 14 days for the return of children under age 5.
• July 8, 2018 … The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said the administration provided it with a list of 102 children under 5 years old who must be reunited by Tuesday, July 10, 2018 under an order by U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego.
• July 9, 2018 … Judge Dolly Gee rejected the Trump administration's efforts to detain immigrant families for long terms. Judge Gee held that there was no basis to amend the 1997 Flores agreement decree that requires children to be released to licensed care programs within 20 days.
• July 16, 2018 … Federal judge Dana Sabraw, who is overseeing the U.S. government's efforts to reunify more than 2,500 migrant children it separated from their parents ordered a temporary hold on deportations for reunified families. Government officials told Sabraw that 2,480 of the older children have been matched to a parent; 918 of those children's parents have been cleared by government agencies and are expected to be reunified by the July 26 deadline.
• July 31, 2018 … U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ordered the Trump administration to obtain consent or a court order before administering any psychotropic medications to migrant children, except in cases of dire emergencies.
• August 3, 2018 … Justice Department lawyers wrote in a court filing Thursday, August 2, that the American Civil Liberties Union should use its “considerable resources,” its network of advocacy groups, and information from the government to locate parents separated from their children.
• August 30,2018 … There are still 497 children who are separated from their parents. So far, 2,157 children have been released or reunited. (Washington Post, 8-30-18)
• August 31, 2018 … U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen declined to halt DACA program.
• September 7, 2018 … The Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services officially publish a document in the Federal Register, outlining proposed regulations that, if approved, would replace the Flores settlement agreement, which was designed to protect immigrant children in government custody.
• October 1, 2018 ... More than 1,600 migrant children have been sent with little notice on late-night voyages to their new home: a barren tent city to the City of Tornillo, located in West Texas.
• October 2, 2018 … U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen blocked the Trump administration’s move to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 300,000 nationals from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua and Sudan.
• October 17, 2018 … The city of Dilley has signed a deal with the federal government that will provide the city more than $600,000 a year to keep open the largest family immigrant detention center in the country.ICE will pay Dilley, which has a population of about 4,000, roughly $13 million a month for the cost of detaining immigrants at the facility. Dilley already collects annual revenue-sharing payments from CoreCivic, with $200,000 due in December.
• October 22, 2018 … President Trump said the U.S. would cut off or “substantially reduce” foreign aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, as a caravan of thousands of Central American migrants continued its journey toward the U.S.
• October 27, 2018 … Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto launched a program dubbed “You are home,” which promises shelter, medical attention, schooling and jobs to Central Americans who agree to stay in the southern Mexico states of Chiapas or Oaxaca.
• October 28, 2018 … Another caravan of an estimated 200 migrants departed from El Salvador en route to the United States.
• October 29, 2018 … The Pentagon will deploy up 5,000 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to prevent members of a migrant caravan from illegally entering the country, a U.S.
• November 5, 2018 … More than 5,000 troops would be deployed in the three states, the U.S. military said Monday (November 5). Of those, roughly 2,700 are in Texas, 1,200 in Arizona and another 1,100 are in California, the Pentagon said. Another 2,000-plus troops will be in place within days, a U.S. official said, bringing the final tally closer to 8,000.
• November 5, 2018 … The Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to bypass three federal appellate courts and allow the President to terminate the DACA program.
• November 28, 2018 … the Texas 3rd Court of Appeals dismissed a lawsuit by Grassroot Leadership that sought to block the licensing of immigrant detention sites holding women and children as daycare centers. The 3rd Court of Appeals decision represents a reversal of a 2016 court judgment by Judge Karin Crump that ordered the state to refrain from licensing such facilities.
• November 30, 2018 … Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit in Travis County district court against San Antonio, its police department, chief of police and city manager, to require their compliance with Senate Bill 4, which prohibits sanctuary cities in Texas.
• November 30, 2018 … U.S. District Judge Edgardo Ramos of the Southern District of New York ruled that the executive order signed by the President last January, which withheld funding from sanctuary cities, was both illegal and unconstitutional.
• December 8, 2018 … Jakelin Caal Maquin, a 7-year-old Guatemalan girl, died in U.S. Border Patrol custody. According to the Department of Homeland Security, "the initial indication form Providence Hospital is that she passed due to sepsis shock."
• December 19, 2018 … Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court in Washington, dismissed Justice Department policies that made it harder for immigrants to claim asylum because of domestic violence or gang violence, finding the policies violated existing law.
• January 25, 2019 … The nation was in the midst of the longest government shutdown in American history with 35 days, and the President promised to keep it going for “months or even years” until he got $5 billion to build a wall along the southern border. The government shutdown started on December 22, 2018 and officially ended on January 25, 2019.
• March 9, 2019 … Federal Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered that more than 2,700 children be reunited with their parents, ruled that his authority applies to any parents who were separated at the border on or after July 1, 2017.