U.S. Ordered to Identify Thousands More Separated Families

(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government must identify perhaps thousands more families who were separated at the Mexican border as long ago as July 2017, a federal judge said Friday.

• The judge granted a motion by the American Civil Liberties Union to expand a lawsuit seeking family reunification to include parents whose children were taken from them before the Justice Department implemented a "zero tolerance" policy last year
• The ruling means that the government must provide the identities of the parents and the children, who are no longer in U.S. custody, to the court and ACLU
• ACLU lawyers said they will contact the families to see whether they want to be identified
• The case is Ms. L. v. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 18-CV-0428, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego)

To contact the reporter on this story: Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Wollman at ewollman@bloomberg.net, David Glovin

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