Letter to Attorney General George Jepsen | Protect Connecticut’s Migrant Children

“We seek to protect the most vulnerable, join us in advocating to reunite recently separated migrant families.”
– Sharon Prince, Chair and President

Click here to request that Attorney General George Jepsen obtain justice for the immigrant children who have been separated from their parents, while currently being detained in the state of Connecticut.

July 2, 2018

Attorney General George Jepsen
Office of the Attorney General State of Connecticut
55 Elm Street
Hartford, CT 06106

Re: States’ Lawsuit Against the Trump Administration

Dear Attorney General Jepsen:

Please accept this letter as a formal request that your Office, on behalf of the State of Connecticut, immediately join the current lawsuit filed by seventeen States against the Trump administration requesting that the administration reunite families that have been separated at the Mexican border. Your failure to do so to date reflects both a stunning failure to engage on behalf of children who are currently being detained in your State after having been separated from their families. Sadly, your current failure to act on behalf of these detained children is an astonishing example of hypocrisy given your website’s proclamation that “[a]s the public’s lawyer, [you are] here to . . . ensure our children . . . are safe from abuse and neglect.”

As you are clearly aware, there are at least two children who are currently being detained in your State that have been separated from their parents. It appears that removal proceedings have begun against one of these children while their parents are being detained elsewhere. Surely as the highest-ranking Justice official in the State of Connecticut you have the ability to engage and ensure that these children are provided with the care and due process that they deserve and will not rely on a cavalier attitude that this is a federal concern or that other not-for-profits, like the ACLU, who are courageously taking on this fight elsewhere must shoulder the responsibility to care for children in Connecticut. The time has come for Connecticut, in its long-standing role as a leader among the Attorneys General of the States of our Nation, to bring long overdue justice to these migrant children who have been deprived of their innate right not to be separated from their family.

Despite the fact that we brought the aforementioned details of children being detained in Connecticut to your attention by an email to your office dated June 27, 2018, your office once again chose not to join the lawsuit. Curiously your office responded by email that it did not want to initiate litigation while offering, in true bureaucratic tradition, the platitude that your office would continue to monitor the situation. To be clear, you need not initiate any litigation, as your fellow AGs from 17 other states, including the surrounding States of Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New York have already taken the appropriate action and filed suit against the federal government to protect its resident children. All you need to do is join this litigation, a simple act that will make it clear to the citizens of this Nation that Connecticut will do everything in its power to protect its resident children to the same extent that other States have chosen to do.

As to your office’s suggestion that it is unclear as to both standing to sue, and potential causes of action, we respectfully suggest that you and your staff of attorneys review the 128-page complaint currently filed by the 17 other States. Even a cursory review of this complaint will provide you and your staff with numerous theories of both standing and appropriate causes of action including, but not limited to, substantive and procedural due process violations and an equal protection violation. Furthermore, the President’s executive order that purportedly suspends the policy of separating families is completely silent as to how and when the children that have already been separated from their families will be reunited with their loved ones. In sum, we urge your office to spend its valuable resources and collective talents on finding a way to protect these migrant children rather than finding excuses to avoid joining a currently filed lawsuit.

We surely hope that your failure to act now is not because you have decided not to seek re-election. In any event, we remind you once again that your own website proudly proclaims that “[a]s the public’s lawyer, [you are] here to . . . ensure our children . . . are safe from abuse and neglect.” We can think of no greater demonstration of your desire to protect children than to join the current lawsuit filed on behalf of 17 other States. Surely, the children being detained in our State of Connecticut, and those that may be relocated to Connecticut in the future, have the same rights and the same need of protection as the migrant children being held in the 17 other States that have already filed suit. We can think of no coherent reason, and your office has not furnished any, why other Attorneys General have taken the appropriate steps to file the current lawsuit against the administration while you have repeatedly chosen to sit on your hands.

In your remaining months in office, we urge you to demonstrate the courage and leadership you repeatedly campaigned on by joining the current lawsuit to reunite those children being detained in Connecticut with their families. As a Connecticut resident recently made clear, “I think the community as a whole should rally behind [these children] and do whatever we can to help, because that is part of our job as a community.” See Emotional Immigration Debate Plays Out in a Remote Coastal Town, News Times, Friday June 29, 2018. In short, it is part of your job, and perhaps the most important part of your job as the AG for Connecticut, to do all you can to help these children. We, the undersigned, stand willing to join you in this effort to pursue justice for those migrant children being detained within our State’s borders.

Respectfully Submitted,