HOUSTON – Immigration protesters in Brownsville are getting some man power from the Houston area.
Protesters loaded buses and headed to the border to rally for what continues to be a hot-button issue.
Organized by the ALCU, Compassionate Houston, Compassionate DFW, Compassionate Austin and Compassionate San Antonio along with community members went to Brownsville and the border to “make a clear and luminous expression about the critical importance of keeping families together and of restoring family integrity as key to the normal development of our children and society, no matter where they live, no matter from where they come.”
Buses left around 5 a.m. Thursday from Resurrection Metropolitan Community Church. They are expected to return at 8:30 p.m.
According to the U.S. Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, more than 2,000 minors were separated from their families.
A federal judge in California on Tuesday ordered a halt to most family separations at the U.S. border and the reunification of all families that have been separated.
The order requires federal officials to stop detaining parents apart from their minor children, absent a determination the parent is unfit or the parent declines reunification; reunify all parents with their minor children who are under the age of 5 within 14 days and reunify all parents with their minor children age 5 and older within 30 days.
As of this week, HHS said it was caring for roughly 11,800 unaccompanied immigrant children, about 80% of whom had arrived at the U.S. border by themselves.
But 2,047 of the children are in HHS care because they were separated from their parents at the border under President Donald Trump's now-reversed policy to prosecute all parents caught crossing the border illegally.