By the end of next week all eligible families separated at the border are supposed to be reunited.That's the deadline a California federal judge threw down for the government.
A local immigration attorney said Friday two of her clients being held in Aurora were put on a plane headed to Texas and she believes it’s so they can meet their children.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order a month ago ending the separation of families but maintaining the zero-tolerance policy.
"Day by day we are getting more information about the government’s plan to reunify family members," said Laura Lunn, an immigration attorney who works with the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
Lunn says she's helping moms held in Aurora and whose kids were taken to other states.
With the judge’s July 26 deadline looming, Lunn said she got her first hint transfers were in the works when she went to court Thursday.
"I have two clients personally who were put on a plane," said Lunn Friday afternoon. " I have not yet heard from them, but it's my belief they were taken to Port Isabel.”
Lunn said she believes the government’s intention is to reunite parents with their kids in Texas.
"I’m working to reach out to the case workers for the children of my clients, so I can verify the children are also on the way to Port Isabel," she said.
9NEWS asked ICE about this and they told us to contact the Department of Homeland Security. We hadn't heard back as of Friday night.
But as recently as Thursday, Homeland Security posted online the dangers of trying to illegally cross the southwest border, citing trafficking, smuggling, health and safety risks.
This press release also said on July 10, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen met with officials from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico to talk strategy to “expand and share joint public messaging efforts to dissuade potential migrants from taking the dangerous journey north—and work to counter-message the advertising and false information promoted by human smugglers."
But attorneys like Lunn said many families are seeking asylum.
She was able to find out where some of her client's kids were taken.
"I reached out to our local ICE office,” Lunn said, “very soon thereafter the case worker of the child reached out directly to the mothers."
Lunn said a third client was reunited with her child Tuesday in Texas. And two other mothers were able to talk to their children over the phone but had to pay for those calls.
Reunions have already started happening.
Families are being asked for documents like birth certificates to make sure they are being reunited with the right kids. Some are reaching out to loved ones in their home country to get that paperwork.
Lunn also said some parents gave a DNA swab within the last week and a half as another option to help make sure parents are reunited with the right children.
Initially RMIAN, screened around 50 families separated the border brought to Colorado.
But Lunn said recently, she hasn't seen any new parents show up in Colorado separated from their kids.
