Case: 18-50492 Document: 00514948510 Page: 1 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 IN THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit FILED No. 18-50492 May 8, 2019 Lyle W. Cayce UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Clerk Plaintiff - Appellee v. BLANCA NIEVE VASQUEZ-HERNANDEZ, Defendant - Appellant --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee v. ELBA LUZ DOMINGUEZ-PORTILLO Defendant - Appellant -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee v. MAYNOR ALONSO CLAUDINO LOPEZ, Defendant - Appellant -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Case: 18-50492 Document: 00514948510 Page: 2 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 No. 18-50492 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee v. JOSE FRANCIS YANES-MANCIA, Defendant - Appellant --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, Plaintiff - Appellee v. NATIVIDAD ZAVALA-ZAVALA, Defendant - Appellant Appeal from the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas Before KING, HIGGINSON, and COSTA, Circuit Judges. STEPHEN A. HIGGINSON, Circuit Judge: In unrelated incidents between October 21, 2017 and October 23, 2017, Appellants Blanca Nieve Vasquez-Hernandez, Elba Luz Dominguez-Portillo, Maynor Alonso Claudino-Lopez, Jose Francis Yanes-Mancia, and Natividad Zavala-Zavala were each apprehended by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) soon after entering the United States from Mexico. Appellants, citizens of Honduras and El Salvador, were each accompanied by a minor child (in one appellant’s case, a grandchild). 1 Appellants stated to CBP during initial 1 The children ranged between 7 and 16 years old. 2 Case: 18-50492 Document: 00514948510 Page: 3 Date Filed: 05/08/2019 No. 18-50492 processing that they feared persecution in their home countries. They were arrested, charged with misdemeanor improper entry under 8 U.S.C. § 1325(a), and detained in El Paso. The government did not detain the children with their parents, but instead transferred the children to the custody of the Office of Refuge Resettlement (ORR) in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 2 Before July 2017, children were typically only referred to ORR when they entered without a parent or guardian. U.S. DEP’T HEALTH HUMAN SERVS. OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL, Separated Children Placed in Office of Refugee Resettlement Care, 3 (Jan. 2019), https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-BL-18- 00511.pdf. Before July 2017, “some children [were] referred to ORR after being separated by DHS from a parent . . . with whom the child arrived. Historically, these separations were rare and occurred because of circumstances such as the parent’s medical emergency or a determination that the parent was a threat to the child’s safety.” Id. However, between July and November 2017, the El Paso sector of CBP “implemented new policies that resulted in 281 individuals in families being separated.” Id. It was during this period that Appellants arrived with their children. Appellants’ immigration forms indicate that they were separated from their children not because of a medical emergency or safety concern, but because of the parents’ impending prosecutions. A magistrate judge convicted and sentenced Appellants after bench trials where Appellants stipulated to facts establishing all the elements of a § 2 See 8 U.S.C. § 1232(b)(3) (“Except in the case of exceptional circumstances, any [federal] department or ...
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