The El Paso Experiment: A Public Defender’s Lonely Fight Against Family Separation

The El Paso Experiment: A Public Defender’s Lonely Fight Against Family Separation 

Melissa del Bosque, The Intercept (November 1, 2020) 

Sergio Garcia had been a federal public defender for the Western District of Texas in El Paso for five years when a U.S. Magistrate judge assigned him to help families separated after seeking asylum in the United States. Unbeknownst to Garcia, he was to become the first lawyer to take on the Trump administration’s initial “zero tolerance” pilot project of family separation. In the years since, Garcia, an immigrant from Mexico, has fought tirelessly to reunite families ripped apart by this draconian policy.   

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