During the last hearing in the ACLU’s family separation case on July 10, Judge Dana Sabrow asked the ACLU for suggestions as to what the court should do should the government fail to comply with the court-imposed deadlines to reunite the children with their parents.

As has now been widely reported, and as we made clear in our brief to the court on Thursday evening, the government failed to heed the court’s deadlines. It reunited 58 of the 103 children under five who were separated from their parents, but not by the July 10 deadline – the vast majority or reunifications took place on July 11. The government claimed that 33 parents were ineligible to get their children back because they were in criminal custody, had criminal histories, may have abused their children, had communicable diseases or were not actually the parents – but it did not provide any specific information about most of those 33 parents, leaving us unable to verify whether or not the parents are truly ineligible.

In addition, the government failed to address the plight of the 12 parents who were deported without their children, and did not provide us with specific time and place for each unification as they were ordered to so that the ACLU could arrange for non-governmental organizations to assist the families  and verify that reunification did in fact take place.

As egregious as the government foot-dragging and non-compliance has been, the ACLU is focused on the welfare of the families first and foremost. There are still more than 2,000 kids who remain separated from their parents. Our interest is in reuniting these children with their families as quickly as possible, and making sure that these families are able to get the services they need. The deadline for reuniting the rest of the children is July 26. Towards that end, we have requested that Judge Sabraw hold regular status conferences and exercise judicial oversight to implement the following remedies:

• That the government provide detailed reasons why any parent cannot be reunified with her child, including information on criminal convictions or charges, allegations of abuse or reasons why parentage could not be verified.
• That the government provide a complete list of the children who remain separated from their parents – both those under five and those older than five – along with their parents’ names by July 16.
• That the government complete all parentage verifications and background checks by July 19.
• That the government provide the ACLU as well as parents’ immigration lawyers with at least 24 hours notice of the time, place and location of the reunification, and that lawyers be given access to the reunification site.
• That if, for any reason, parents are reunited with their children in detention facilities, that immigration attorneys be given proper access to the families.
• And that the government establish a fund to pay for professional mental health counseling to treat children suffering from severe trauma as a result of being separated from their parents. 

A status conference will be held in the case on Friday, July 13, and our hope is that the court will hold the government to account. 

Despite requests from a senator and the European Union, the Trump administration is refusing to make public an important report by a federal privacy watchdog about how the U.S. government handles personal information swept up by its surveillance.

The public has a right to know what the government does with the vast troves of private data that American intelligence agencies collect in the course of their spying. On Thursday, we filed a Freedom of Information Act request demanding the release of the report, significant portions of which are unclassified.

The report is from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which was created by Congress to be an independent, bipartisan agency. Its mission is to help ensure that national security laws and programs don’t infringe on individual rights. As part of that mission, the board has issued several significant oversight reports addressing government surveillance. While we have not always agreed with the conclusions of these reports, they have played a vital role in the democratic process by educating the public about the powerful spying tools at the government’s disposal. In the wake of Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s illegal mass surveillance programs, the board’s work informed the public debate by prompting the declassification of additional details about these secret programs.  

Recognizing the board’s importance as a mechanism for transparency, Congress required that it make its reports public to the greatest extent possible. But now the Trump administration is wrongly trying to keep its findings secret.

The report we’re seeking concerns the implementation of President Obama’s 2014 policy directive on government spying and the handling of personal information, which can include emails, chats, text messages, and more. The directive recognized that “all persons have legitimate privacy interests in the handling of their personal information.” While Obama’s policy changes left much to be desired, they did include improvements, including some very modest protections for the handling of personal information of non-American citizens abroad. The directive also encouraged the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to provide the president with a report assessing how the new policies were carried out.

In December 2016, the board delivered its report to the White House and congressional intelligence committees. Two months later, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote a letter to Office of the Director of National Intelligence, urging it to make public the unclassified portions of the report and to declassify the rest of it as soon as possible. European Union officials and representatives have also called for the report’s release.

In response, the Trump administration has refused to release any of the report, even with redactions, citing executive privilege. By shrouding the report in secrecy, the administration is depriving the public of the ability to understand how the government is applying Obama’s efforts to impose even minimal privacy safeguards on highly controversial NSA spying.

The European Union has said that the disclosure of the report is important for its annual assessment of the central U.S.-EU data-sharing agreement, known as Privacy Shield. That agreement allows American tech firms operating in Europe to easily transfer data to the United States.

Just last week, the European Parliament called for the suspension of the Privacy Shield agreement because the United States is not complying with EU law. Suspending the agreement would be devastating for Silicon Valley. One of parliament’s many concerns was Trump’s claim of “presidential privilege” over the board’s report, which likely addresses the implementation of privacy protections for Europeans.

In addition to keeping the report secret, the Trump administration appears to be undermining the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board’s proper functioning. Since February 2017, four of the board’s five positions have been vacant, preventing it from doing much of its work to investigate government overreach. Three new members have been nominated but are still awaiting Senate confirmation after many months. Even if all three were confirmed, that would leave the board imbalanced, with three Republicans and only one Democrat. In this scenario, the board’s rules require that the next member not be a Republican, but Trump has made no nomination.

Given the vacancies — and the fact that the current nominee for chair of the board is on the record supporting unconstitutional surveillance programs — there are now serious questions regarding whether the board will act as an independent check on surveillance abuses by the executive branch in the future. 

Despite questions about the future of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, its reports have shed much-needed light on the government’s surveillance practices. By hiding the report that we’re demanding today, the Trump administration is not only undermining the board’s purpose — it’s also undermining democratic accountability.

Over the past week, a Facebook video went viral, showing an El Paso police officer drawing his gun on a group of Latino kids outside a community center and handcuffing the person taking the video. The video has drawn outrage — and rightly so — as an illustration of the urgent need for robust police policies and training emphasizing de-escalation and how to interact with youth.

The video cuts in when the officer has one of the kids detained on the ground. The other kids — upset about what’s going on — yell at the officer. In response, he draws his gun, points it at the group, and yells, “Back up, motherfuckers!” Another officer runs up, and they drag the detained kid to the roadside. While the second officer cuffs him, the first officer returns to the group with his nightstick out, yelling at the kids to “get back.”

Seeing that the other kids are getting upset, the kid with the camera yells over, “It’s all good, wait, we’re going to put a report on these two fools. It’s all good.” The officer then approaches him and places him in handcuffs. After the kid’s mom takes the camera, the officer directs her to come over to him. When she runs away, he threatens, “I know where you live!”

Shortly thereafter, the officer goes back to the kids and asks them what they’re going to do. He challenges them: “Do something! Do something!” He moves chest-to-chest with one of them, staring aggressively down — and ends up bringing that kid to the police car too, detaining him.

The video captures a police officer acting contrary to his sworn oath to protect and serve. Instead of de-escalating the situation using techniques designed to calm everyone down and avoid violence, the officer raised the stakes. And when another kid tried to de-escalate the situation by telling the kids he had everything on video — which the First Amendment gives him the right to do — the officer arrested him and put him in the back of the patrol car.

De-escalation is one of the most important strategies for policing. The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), an independent research organization, calls it the “preferred, tactically sound” approach for resolving incidents and recommends that it should be a “core theme” of any agency’s training program. Without de-escalating situations, officers create opportunities for unnecessary use of force with devastating consequences for the communities they are supposed to serve.

Although many police departments across the country have some form of de-escalation referenced in policies and training, police departments generally place much more emphasis in training on using force instead. A 2015 PERF study of 280 departments across the U.S. found that for every hour recruits received on de-escalation training, they received over seven hours of firearms training. De-escalation training needs to be emphasized for all officers serving their communities. Otherwise, we wind up with situations like the one in El Paso.

For similar reasons, officers also need clear policies and training on interacting with youth. Even though juveniles are only involved with 3.5 percent of all police interactions, they make up 30.1 percent of all interactions where police use force (the vast majority of which are initiated by officers).

Strategies for Youth, which specializes in research and evidence-based training for law enforcement, has found that “a little bit of knowledge about how teens think can go a long way toward avoiding the escalation of minor incidents.” It’s “how officers read the youth and the incident” that affects how the incidents go down. Unfortunately, few officers receive this type of training in any meaningful way. In Texas, the most recent survey of hours spent on juvenile justice training for new recruits showed an average of just 2 percent of total training time.

According to Strategies for Youth, “The critical factor in the youth’s response and perception of the legitimacy of police authority is how an officer approaches a youth.” The El Paso kids in the video were insulting the officer — but responding aggressively and with violent displays of force was counterproductive, not to mention counter to the professional standards we should hold police officers to.

Interactions like these reinforce the serious disadvantage youth of color already experience and recognize in their interactions with police, which have lasting and radical effects in our communities. And arrests like the ones in this video for “youthful disobedience rather than significant crimes” funnel kids of color into the criminal justice system, triggering a chain of events that can disrupt the rest of their lives.

The El Paso Police Department as well as police departments across the country must ensure that their policies and their police training allow officers to automatically de-escalate situations and respond to youth effectively. The kids in this video are the canaries in the coal mine.