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No reunion plan afoot for GA immigrant detainee families

ATLANTA --

Immigrants currently detained in Georgia are still waiting to hear when or if they’ll be reunited with the family members separated from them by the US government. President Trump has ordered the practice of separating children stopped.

But for the thousands detained prior to Trump's executive order, nothing has changed yet.

In south Georgia, a

ttorneys say the Stewart detention center south of Columbus began to swell with new immigrant detainees last week, seized at the Mexican border and separated from their families.

Attorney Michelle Lapointe was at Stewart Wednesday when word of the Trump executive order began to trickle out. She says she was speaking to a father detained at the Mexican border whose son is held separately by the government. "W

e could hear the guards in the hallway discussing the fact President Trump had signed this order, said Lapointe, who

sometimes works out of an office of the Southern Poverty Law Center in the town of Lumpkin, which is near the sprawling Stewart prison.

Attorneys for immigrant detainees have been trying to learn what’s next for them under the order. "U

nfortunately, nothing has changed for those parents at all," Lapointe said.

In Atlanta, an ICE spokesman emailed a statement that said in part "ICE is committed to connecting family members as quickly as possible after separation so that parents know the location of their children and have regular communication with them." The statement said nothing about reuniting them.

LaPointe says that's consistent with her experience since the Trump order was issued. "Th

ere’s nothing in place to assure that that reunification will happen," Lapointe said. "And the executive order changes nothing, doesn’t even address the issue of those parents and those children."

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