The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] on Monday supplemented [press release] its lawsuit [JURIST report] with a memorandum in support of a preliminary injunction [text, PDF] to block the Trump administration from separating asylum-seeking immigrant parents from their children and to order the administration to reunite separated families.

The ACLU urges the court issue this preliminary injunction, arguing that Trump’s executive order [JURIST report] to end the family separation policy was insufficient. The ACLU specifically points to the exception in the executive order [text] that permits detaining parents and children separately “when there is a concern that detention of an alien child with the child’s alien parent would pose a risk to the child’s welfare.” According to ACLU, what qualifies as a “concern” has not been defined in the executive order, thereby leaving open potential for broad interpretation by immigration officers to justify separations that do not satisfy due process standards.

The ACLU also states that the executive order provided no plan to reunite families currently separated by the policy. In the order, the ACLU is requesting the court order the administration to reunite children with their parents within 30 days; to reunite children under five with their parents within 5 days; to provide parents with the ability to telephone their children within 7 says; and not to remove separated parents from the US without their children “unless the parent affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily waives the right to reunification before removal.”

More than 2,300 children have already been separated from their parents and will not be immediately reunited with their family as the adults continue through immigration legal proceedings.

In June, the government sought to have the ACLU’s lawsuit dismissed, but a federal judge declared [JURIST report] that the policy may violate due process.

There has been domestic and international [JURIST report] outcry to end the family separation policy. According to the attorneys general from 20 states “a child’s best interests are served by remaining with his or her family, absent a rigorous judicial inquiry resulting in a finding that a parent is unfit or proof beyond a reasonable doubt that a crime has been committed.”

The ACLU, in agreement with the previous statement made by the attorneys general, urges for children separated from parents to be immediately reunited with one another.