The US government was accused before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of "disappearing" hundreds of children who are separated from their family after crossing the border with Mexico illegally.

Immigrant rights organizations filed the lawsuit on Thursday in response to the separation of hundreds of families registered since US Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on May 7 that the Justice Department would prosecute anyone accused of illegally crossing the border.

An official of the Customs and Border Protection service recently told the congress that 638 adults had been handed over to the authorities to be processed between May 6 and 19. These adults had 658 children with them.

By way of comparison, the Department of Health and Human Services, which takes care of unaccompanied migrant children, said in April that since October it had received approximately 700 cases of children whose parents were believed to be in the custody of the federal government.

Immigration lawyers and activists claim that parents are incarcerated without knowing what happened to their children.

Efren Olivares, attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, who filed the complaint, said the separation of families by the US government "clearly violates international law."

"No advanced democracy in the world separates the children from the parents by the mere fact that they came to the country," he said.

The Women's Refugee Commission and an immigration clinic at the Law School of the University of Texas joined the lawsuit.

In one of the cases mentioned in the lawsuit, South Texas Border Patrol agents detained a 40-year-old Guatemalan and his 12-year-old son. The lawsuit says that the Central American was locked in a cell while his son was being held outside. . When the man left the cell, his son was no longer there.

A lawyer who works with the Guatemalan called a special government line that offers information about the minors in his custody. According to the lawsuit, there was no information about the child in the system. The father and the lawyer still did not know the child's whereabouts.

Activists say they hope that, as a result of the lawsuit, the IACHR will ask the government for more information on how the families it separates follow.

The IACHR is an organ of the Organization of American States.

The Civil Liberties Union also went to court to question the separation of families.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service said in a statement that it is "committed to connecting the members of these families as soon as possible after the separation" and that it will collaborate with the Department of Health and Human Services to "establish communication channels regular and coordinate separations, if necessary. "

Neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Border Protection Service responded to requests for comment.

More info: http://muckrakerfarm.com/2018/06/trump-week-72-friday-1-june-thursday-7-june-2018-days-498-504/