Latest: US Official: Fort Bliss to house detained families

A federal official says the U.S. Army post Fort Bliss in El Paso will house families detained after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The official was not authorized to discuss the plans and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The official says Goodfellow Air Force Base will be used for housing for detained unaccompanied children. Goodfellow is located in the central Texas city of San Angelo.

Earlier Monday, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that the Trump administration’s reversal in referring parents crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution is only temporary because the government is running out of resources.

Sanders spoke to reporters after the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he has stopped referring cases involving children for prosecution.

__

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

___

4:45 p.m.

After learning of separated migrant families at the U.S-Mexico border, a 6-year-old girl from Atlanta wanted to help.

Armed with lemonade, the girl went to work raising funds Sunday. His mother, Shannon Cofrin Gaggero, set a broad goal of $1,000, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. After the first day, they raised more than $1,100.

Now –from the virtual fundraiser and physical lemonade stand– a total of more than $13,000 has been raised. More than 200 donations have rolled in for the Gaggeros family’s cause.

Proceeds will benefit the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Service, a nonprofit in Texas that offers free and low-cost legal services to immigrants.

Upon learning of separated families, many people in the U.S. raised money to help them. One Silicon Valley couple has raised more than $20 million.

___

4:15 p.m.

A group of mothers and fathers who were separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border broke down in tears as they talked about the uncertainties of being reunited with their sons and daughters.

The five parents were among 32 who had been released from federal custody to the care of a Texas charitable organization in El Paso, Texas.

Speaking Spanish and all wearing ankle monitors, the parents told reporters during a news conference Monday that they don’t know when they might see their children again.

One mother from Guatemala was able to talk with a social worker in New York where her 4-year-old son was taken.

When she asked to speak with the boy, the social worker told her the child was angry and didn’t want to talk with her because he believed his mother had abandoned him.

The woman said she would not have come to the U.S. had she known her child would be taken from her.

___

3 p.m.

Legislation asking Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to recall National Guard troops at the border until families who entered illegally are reunited with their children has fizzled.

New Orleans Democratic Sen. J.P. Morrell didn’t bring the measure up for Senate consideration before the special session adjourned Sunday night, amid a lack of support for it.

Louisiana has a three-person National Guard team and one helicopter at the Texas border. Edwards, a Democrat, decided the team will remain until mid-July as planned.

He says the crew had no role in separating families, a policy the Trump administration enacted and then reversed.

___

2:45 p.m.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has repeatedly dodged questions about whether he supported President Donald Trump’s immigration policy at the Mexican border, saying it’s outside of his jurisdiction.

The Republican Walker skirted the issue Monday with reporters, declining to give an opinion.

Walker has frequently commented on immigration and other federal or international political issues, particularly in 2015 when he was running for president. Just over two months ago, Walker tweeted praise to Trump for “taking on illegal drugs, human trafficking, illegal firearms, and all the problems we see on our southern border.”

His re-election campaign is even paying for digital ads running on Facebook that voice support for sending National Guard troops to defend the southern border.

___

2:40 p.m.

New York state officials say they’re ready to provide social services to the estimated hundreds of immigrant children housed at New York foster-care facilities after being separated from their asylum-seeking parents.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo says Monday that state agencies can send public services providers to government-contracted foster care agencies that request help for children separated from parents after the families were caught crossing the southern border illegally.

The Democrat was joined at his Manhattan office by the heads of the state health and family services agencies and by immigrant advocates. He also announced that state services can be provided to children released to a foster family or to a relative living in New York state.

Cuomo has been highly critical of Republican President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy that results in the separation of asylum-seeking families.

___

2:30 p.m.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders insists the administration’s reversal in referring parents crossing the border illegally with children for prosecution is only temporary because the government is running out of resources.

Sanders spoke to reporters at the White House after the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he has stopped referring cases involving children for prosecution.

That’s after President Trump’s order that stopped the separation of children and their parents who cross the border illegally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions says the “no tolerance” policy is still in place, but there will be no one to prosecute without referrals.

Sanders says stopping the referrals is a temporary solution. She says it will only last a short amount of time because: “we’re going to run out of space, we’re going to run out of resources to keep people together.”

She called on Congress to change immigration laws.

___

1:50 p.m.

No arrests were made among protesters blocking a street outside a speech where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions cast children at the nation’s southern border as victims of a broken immigration system.

Demonstrations outside the Peppermill hotel-casino were colorful, loud and peaceful.

An act of civil disobedience by more than 20 people who sat down in a crosswalk didn’t draw a police response.

Reno police Officer Travis Warren, a department spokesman, says officers only wanted to maintain safety, not arrest people.

Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada leader Bob Fulkerson says protesters got their point across.

Fulkerson calls separating children from families at the nation’s southern border an act of state-sponsored terror.

Sessions told a school safety conference it’s a difficult and frustrating situation.

The attorney general declared that more than 80 percent of the children crossing U.S. borders are “by themselves, without parents or guardians –often sent with a paid smuggler.”

_

1:40 p.m.

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says an inability to process all asylum seekers at border crossings is temporary.

Commissioner Kevin McAleenan says the facilities were not built for such large numbers.

He says that some asylum seekers had to wait a day at four crossings, were turned away and told to return.

There are long waits at San Diego’s San Ysidro crossing. He described it is an “outlier” with longer waits.

Asylum seekers who go to a specific border crossing are different from the thousands of parents who were arrested crossing illegally with their children under a zero-tolerance policy.

McAleenan says agents have temporarily stopped referring cases for criminal prosecution involving parents and children.

He says it’s because of President Trump’s order that called for children to stop being separated from their families.

___

1:35 p.m. Immigrant rights activists in Seattle are suing the Trump administration, saying it is unnecessarily prolonging the separation of asylum-seeking immigrants from their children.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle on behalf of three Central American migrants held in federal custody in Washington state, thousands of miles from where immigration officials have transferred their children. The lawsuit seeks class-action status on behalf of other immigrants separated from their children and detained in Washington state.

The organization says U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has provided no information about whether or when the detainees’ asylum cases will move forward or when they’ll be reunited with their children.

Washington, California, New Jersey and at least eight other states have also announced plans to sue the administration over the separations this week.

___

1:25 p.m.

A federal judge in Portland ordered that immigration attorneys be given access to more than 120 asylum seekers being held at the federal prison in Oregon.

U.S. District Judge Michael Simon on Monday granted an emergency order sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Innovation Law Lab, a nonprofit whose attorneys have been denied access to immigrants being held at the prison in Sheridan.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred the immigrants to Oregon because other holding facilities have been overloaded since the Trump administration enacted a “zero tolerance” policy involving people entering the U.S. illegally.

The detainees are from 16 countries, but more than half are from India and Nepal.

___

1:15 p.m.

Federal officials Monday ordered protesters to end their round-the-clock occupation of property outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Portland, Oregon.

Law enforcement officers began distributing notices to vacate late Monday morning. The several hundred protesters have so far ignored the demand.

The group rallying under the moniker Occupy ICE PDX wants to abolish ICE and end the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy in which all unlawful border crossings are referred for prosecution.

Occupy ICE PDX last week called for similar occupations throughout the country, and demonstrators have responded in places such as New York, Los Angeles and Detroit.

Earlier Monday, federal law enforcement officers entered the Portland’s ICE headquarters to secure government property ahead of the vacate notice.

he protesters did not try to thwart officers.

Portland’s ICE headquarters has been the site of an occupation since June 17.

___

12:55 p.m.

The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection says he has temporarily stopped referring for criminal prosecution adults who cross the border illegally with children.

Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told reporters in Texas Monday he ordered referrals suspended within hours of President Trump’s executive order last week that stopped the practice of separating families.

He says that the zero tolerance policy remains in effect, but cases cannot be prosecuted because parents cannot be separated from their children.

He says he is working to develop plan to resume illegally entry prosecutions of adults with children.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in Reno, Nevada that federal prosecutors would continue to criminally prosecute adults caught crossing the border.

But Border Patrol agents must refer cases for prosecution.

More than 2,300 children were separated from their families before the order last week that is causing chaos at the border on how to implement it.

___

12:05 p.m.

A temporary tent shelter set up in far west Texas for immigrant children is close to its 360-person capacity.

Reporters were allowed Monday to briefly visit the shelter at the Tornillo border crossing, where more than 320 children ages 13 to 17 are being held.

About half are from Guatemala, and 23 of the children had been separated from adults who accompanied them across the U.S.-Mexico border.

The facility has a current capacity of 360. The tents are air-conditioned , and a facility administrator told reporters that the main complaint he hears from children on site is that the tents get too cold sometimes.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, boys and girls are kept in separate tents and use separate bathrooms and showers.

Reporters weren’t allowed to enter any tents holding children. Two girls who stopped briefly in front of reporters said that they were doing well.

___

12 p.m.

A Democratic lawmaker says an eastern Kansas nonprofit that has a contract with the federal government to care for unaccompanied minors is caring for 44 immigrant youth, nine of them under the age of 12.

House Minority Leader Jim Ward and former U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom are working to reunite the children with their parents.

Grissom has assembled a team of 10 lawyers to provide legal services to the children.

Grissom says they have been led to believe some of the children were separated from parents in a crackdown on illegal crossings of the U.S-Mexico border, but that is not confirmed.

Grissom, Ward, state officials and officials from The Villages, which operates five group homes home on a 400-acre (162-hectare) site outside Topeka, are set to meet on the issue Wednesday.

___

11:55 a.m.

A Democratic congresswoman says children as young as 4 and 5 are among a group of 22 unaccompanied migrant children being held in a Catholic Charities facility south of Miami.

U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz says conditions at the Monsignor Bryan Walsh Children’s Village she visited on Monday are much better than at the Homestead Shelter for Unaccompanied Children, which she toured Saturday.

That center is holding about 1,000 migrants, including 70 who’ve been separated from their parents.

President Donald Trump signed an order last week ending the policy, but many children remain separated.

Wasserman Shultz told reporters on Monday that she considers the practice of separating children from their parents “sadistic,” ”demonic,” and “outrageous.”

She noted that she saw two minor children who have newborns at the Children’s Village.

___

11:50 a.m.

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended Trump administration immigration policies during a speech at a conference in Nevada while hundreds of protesters rallied outside.

Sessions told a convention sponsored by the National Association of School Resource Officers in Reno on Monday that the controversy over immigration is a “difficult and frustrating situation” that requires Congress to pass new legislation.

He says many children detained at the southern border were brought there by violent gang members, and that “children have indeed borne much of the burden of our broken immigration system.”

Sessions says the compassionate thing to do is protect children from violence and drugs, put criminals in jail and secure borders. He calls the alternative, open borders, “both radical and dangerous.”

No arrests were immediately reported outside, where demonstrators with signs, drums, and a mariachi band waged a peaceful protest.

Some sat in a busy roadway for while police diverted traffic around the casino-hotel where Sessions was speaking.

___

11:25 a.m.

U.S. defense officials say the Trump administration has chosen two military bases in Texas to house detained migrants.

The officials identified the bases as Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base and spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about a pending announcement.

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis had said on Sunday that two bases had been selected but he would not identify them.

One official said unaccompanied children detained after crossing the U.S. border would be sheltered at one of the bases and the other base would house families of migrant detainees.

Under the arrangement, the Defense Department would provide the land but the operations would be run by other agencies.

— Lolita C. Baldor and Robert Burns.

____

11:05 a.m.

A Republican congressman says unaccompanied migrant children housed at a Catholic Charities facility in South Florida are being treated “exceptionally well” and are “happy.”

U.S. Rep. Carlos Curbelo toured Catholic Charities Boystown south of Miami Monday morning.

He says some children were in classrooms and others were on a field trip to an aquarium.

Curbelo says the “children were smiling, they were happy.”

Curbelo says he opposed President Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from family members detained at the U.S.-Mexico border. But he says the facility is doing a good job caring for 22 children.

Trump signed an executive order last week ending the policy, but many children remain separated.

Curbelo says he will work to find a permanent workable immigration policy.

___

11 a.m.

More than a dozen protesters are blocking a busy road in downtown Reno, Nevada, near where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is appearing to speak at a school safety conference.

The Monday morning demonstration includes several people holding a banner saying “No Human is Illegal” to call attention to Trump administration immigration policy and the separation of children and families at the U.S. border.

Reno police on bicycles have blocked traffic around the protesters near a downtown casino-hotel. Some demonstrators have promised to engage in peaceful civil disobedience and invite arrest.

Nearly two dozen Nevada groups in a progressive alliance tried last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw Sessions’ invitation.

Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, says that as the nation’s top law enforcement officer, Sessions has important information to share.

___

10:45 a.m.

A team of federal law enforcement officers entered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement building in Portland, Oregon, to secure government property as protesters continued a demonstration against Trump administration immigration policies.

Federal Protective Service spokesman Rob Sperling says officers entered the building during the early hours Monday. Protesters did not try to stop them.

Sperling says it’s a precautionary move, and there’s no indication that activists camped outside the facility have entered it.

Portland’s ICE headquarters has been the site of a round-the-clock protest since June 17. The occupation grew in size early last week and the building has been closed since Wednesday.

Sperling says there’s no timeframe for when employees will return.

___

8:40 a.m.

A coalition of civil rights, religious and union activists opposed to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies are gearing up for a protest in Nevada outside a school safety conference where U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is the keynote speaker.

Several of the protesters gathering for Monday’s rally outside a hotel-casino in Reno say they will engage in civil disobedience to bring attention to the separation of children and families at the U.S. border.

At least one, Bob Fulkerson, told The Associated Press he expects to be arrested.

Nearly two dozen Nevada groups in a progressive alliance tried unsuccessfully last week to persuade the national school law enforcement group hosting the conference to withdraw its invitation to Sessions.

Mo Canady, executive director of the Alabama-based National Association of School Resource Officers, said Sessions has important information to share with school resource officers as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

___

8:25 a.m.

A U.S. congressman says he was turned away from trying to meet with detainees from the southern border crisis because of a chicken pox outbreak at the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington.

The Tacoma News Tribune reports that U.S. Rep. Derek Kilmer, a Democrat, went to the prison Saturday after hearing that a number of migrants who were separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border were transferred there from another federal prison in SeaTac.

Kilmer said he had official tours set up at both facilities but that it was canceled due to protest-related safety concerns.

And when the congressman tried to visit three detainees during the regularly scheduled visiting hours on Saturday, he was told that they were all quarantined due to chicken pox exposure.

___

10 p.m.

A Texas charitable organization says about 30 immigrant parents separated from their children after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border have been freed into its care, but they don’t know where their kids are or when they might see them again despite government assurances that family reunification would be well organized.

The released parents arrived Sunday at Annunciation House in El Paso.

The release is believed to be the first, large one of its kind since President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday that preserved a “zero-tolerance” policy for entering the country illegally but ended the practice of separating immigrant parents and children.

Annunciation House Director Ruben Garcia says the parents were brought by bus after federal authorities withdrew criminal charges.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offered no immediate comment.