The Biden government’s acting attorney general, a longtime career official named Monty Wilkinson, participated in a controversial 2017 decision to remove a Texas Department of Justice (DoJ) lawyer who had raised concerns about migrant children who were being separated from their parents.
E-mails seen by the Guardian show that Wilkinson, who is expected to serve as interim attorney general until Judge Merrick Garland is formally confirmed by the Senate, worked with another longtime career officer, Iris Lan, in reviewing complaints about Joshua Stern , a prosecutor who had told colleagues he was “disturbed” by the Trump administration’s separation policy.
The policy eventually led to the separation of about 1,550 children from their parents, hundreds of whom have not yet met, although Joe Biden said he would make it one of his top priorities.
Stern, who is no longer a DoJ employee, was eventually removed from his post as a temporary detailee, two weeks after senior Texas officials raised questions about him for Washington DC officials, including Wilkinson.
Wilkinson, who Biden chose to serve as attorney general until Garland was confirmed, oversaw the human resources, security planning and justice department library before being promoted to interim attorney general.
A recent report in the New York Times suggested that Wilkinson was a long-standing and trusted employee and that his “low profile” almost guaranteed he was not involved in any of the countless scandals that defined Donald Trump’s justice department and the former attorney general Bill Barr.
But a report published by the Guardian in September 2020 revealed that Wilkinson was one of several career officials who analyzed the complaints that led to the removal of Stern from the western Texas district in 2017.
The report focused on the role that a senior justice department official, Iris Lan, played in reviewing these complaints. Lan had been appointed to serve on a lifetime appointment as a federal judge, but the appointment was never accepted in the Senate after several immigrant rights groups raised concerns about Lan after the Guardian article was published.
It is not clear whether Wilkinson or Lan privately supported or criticized the government’s child separation policy when they heard about Stern’s concerns.
At the time of the controversy, Wilkinson served as director of the executive office of US attorneys, a role for which he was appointed by Eric Holder, Bill Clinton’s former attorney general.
E-mails seen by the Guardian show that a DoJ officer in Texas named Jose Gonzalez sent a memo to the then United States attorney for the western district, Richard Durbin, in September 2017, in which he outlined concerns about Stern, including complaints that Stern was “particularly troubled” by cases where the defendants were unable to locate their children.
The western district in El Paso was at the time involved in a pilot program to criminally prosecute migrants who illegally entered the country, which in turn led to people being separated from their children, sometimes indefinitely.
The policy was later expanded to include all border states, but ended after protests in Congress and in the press, when stories about migrant children being separated began to become known.
Stern was sent to Texas to help deal with a significant flow of migrant cases. But emails showed that he was deeply concerned and alarmed about the children who were separated, and told prosecutors that the parents being prosecuted were “often fleeing violence in their countries of origin”.
He also told superiors in Texas that he had contacted agencies to try to help locate missing children. The memo detailing what was seen as Stern’s insubordination was forwarded by Durbin to Lan, who told Lan that he did not believe Stern was “fully committed to the program”. Durbin was trying to free Stern from the detailee program earlier.
Lan, for his part, said he was not sure about the usual protocol and said that he would like to share the memo with Wilkinson to obtain his “assessment” before “proceeding”. Wilkinson then responded to Lan and Durbin saying that he and Durbin talked and that Durbin would send more “specific examples”.
Stern received a letter of termination that ended his posting on September 20, 2017, two weeks after concerns were first raised with Lan and later Wilkinson.
Stern did not answer the Guardian’s questions.
A DoJ spokesman said in a statement: “The department cannot comment on specific personnel matters. Regarding the process of assigning component details to the United States Attorney’s Office, the decision to continue a detail is between the loan and receipt components. EOUSA performs an administrative function related to the associated paperwork, but does not make decisions about assignments. “
It did not provide additional comments on who made the decision.
A DoJ spokeswoman under the Trump administration said, in response to questions from the Guardian’s previous article on the matter, that Lan had received the memorandum on Stern because of his role as contact with US prosecutors and did not address matters. of staff.
“She directed him, according to his role,” she said.
A recent report from the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) closely examined the role that some department officials played in Trump’s separation policy.
He said that the department’s leadership knew that the policy would result in the separation of children from their families and that former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions “demonstrated a poor understanding of the legal requirements related to the care and custody of separated children. ”.
“We concluded that the Department’s unique focus on increasing immigration processes came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of the processes by family unit and child separations,” said the report.