How Family Reunification Actually Works at the Border

For Morgan Weibel, an immigration attorney and the executive director of the San Francisco branch of the nonprofit Tahirih Justice Center, which advocates for immigrant women and girls fleeing violence, last week was, in a word, “insane.”

Slightly less insane, she clarifies, than the week prior—which she spent shuttling between the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, and the respite centers set up for detained immigrants in the nearby city of McAllen to provide legal assistance as the Trump administration was scrambling to reunite families separated by its “zero-tolerance” immigration policy earlier this year. Some 2,500 children were separated from their parents or guardians as a result of this policy, which called for the prosecution of all individuals entering the United States illegally. In June, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw gave the administration 30 days to reunite children with their parents, with a deadline of July 26. “I don't think I've ever eaten so