The Latest: Judge delays ruling on immigrant parents, kids

SAN DIEGO (AP) - The Latest on a legal challenge to U.S. immigration officials’ practice of separating parents and children at the border (all times local):

5:10 p.m.

A federal judge did not immediately rule Friday on a lawsuit that seeks to prevent U.S. immigration officials from separating parents and children.

U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw asked an attorney for the Trump administration whether separating parents and children violates constitutional rights to due process and a law that says the government should protect the child’s best interests.

He also asked an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union whether a blanket ban on separating parents and children might be overreaching, acknowledging the federal government’s broad power to enforce immigration law.

The ACLU lawsuit involves a Congolese woman who was separated from her daughter after claiming asylum at a San Diego border crossing.

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1:30 p.m.

A federal judge will consider arguments to prohibit U.S. immigration authorities from separating parents from their children at the border in a lawsuit on behalf of a Congolese woman who was separated from her 7-year-old daughter for five months after claiming asylum at a San Diego border crossing.

The mother, identified in court documents as Mrs. L, claimed asylum at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing on Nov. 1 and, four days later, was separated from her daughter. The girl, then 6, was sent to a Chicago shelter overseen by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, while the mother was held at a San Diego immigration detention facility until March 6.The case seeks to halt family separation while the lawsuit proceeds through federal court.