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U.S. NEWS Tuesday 12 February 2019
Pair who secretly filmed Planned

Parenthood fight charges

By PAUL ELIAS
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) —
Planned Parenthood has
made an unusual legal
demand to join California's
criminal prosecution of
two anti-abortion activists
charged with invasion of
privacy for secretly making
videos as they tried to buy
fetal material from the or-
ganization.
A judge in San Francisco Sandra Merritt, left, smiles as she talks with David Daleiden out-
will consider the issue Mon- side of a courtroom in San Francisco, Monday, Feb. 11, 2019.
day as well as a push by Associated Press
prosecutors to keep the
names of 14 abortion-rights tify. The group's attorneys
workers who appear in the say they want the ability Separated migrant families demand
2015 videos confidential. to object to defense ques-
The California attorney tions that could identify or millions from U.S. agencies
general in 2017 charged otherwise jeopardize the
David Daleiden and San- workers' safety. They fear By NOMAAN MERCHANT
dra Merritt of the Center for receiving threats from anti- Associated Press
Medical Progress after Tex- abortion activists. HOUSTON (AP) — Eight
as prosecutors dropped a The judge also is deciding immigrant families de-
similar case against them. whether to close the court- manded millions of dol-
The pair have pleaded room to the public when lars in damages Monday
not guilty and argue they video clips are shown. from the Trump administra-
are undercover journalists A federal judge presiding tion for separating them,
shielded from prosecution. over Planned Parenthood's including a Guatemalan
Daleiden and Merritt were lawsuit against the Center woman who alleged an of-
accused of secretly mak- for Medical Progress last ficer said her 5-year-old son
ing videos that Planned year barred release of the would be taken and then
Parenthood argued were videos. taunted, "Happy Mother's
heavily edited to unfairly Daleiden and Merritt Day."
show workers agreeing to sneaked into numerous In claims filed with the U.S.
sell fetal material for profit, Planned Parenthood meet- government Monday, the In this Dec. 11, 2018 file photo, an asylum-seeking boy from
which the group says it ings and other abortion- parents accused immigra- Central America runs down a hallway after arriving from an im-
does not do. The videos led rights gatherings and shot tion officers of taking their migration detention center to a shelter in San Diego.
to three congressional in- undercover videos of their children away without giv- Associated Press
quiries and criminal investi- attempts to buy fetal ma- ing them information and rated in total because have her son taken, then
gations in at least 15 states. terial. They published the sometimes mocking them agencies did not keep asked that the two be de-
Several abortion-rights videos in 2015. or denying them a chance good enough records as ported together to Guate-
workers plan to testify at Planned Parenthood says to say goodbye. The claims the policy was implement- mala rather than separat-
another court hearing next it doesn't sell fetal mate- allege that many children ed. ed. Her son only spoke the
week in San Francisco that rial for profit and charged remain traumatized even In her claim , the Guate- indigenous Guatemalan
will determine if there's only modest expenses to after being reunited with malan woman alleges she language of Mam.
enough evidence for Da- cover costs of donating it their parents, including a was detained in May with "The officer laughed," the
leiden and Merritt to face for medical research. The 7-year-old girl who won't her son in a type of tempo- claim says. "He made fun
trial. Defense attorneys organization stopped seek- sleep without her mother rary detention facility nick- of her indigenous accent
say their names should be ing reimbursement for its and a 6-year-old boy who named a "hielera," or ice- and said, laughingly, 'it's
made public. shipping costs, and it never is reluctant to eat. box in Spanish. The immi- not that easy.'"
Planned Parenthood says it faced charges. The Department of Home- gration officer who taunt- They were reunited in July,
wants to join the prosecu- In one instance, a grand land Security did not re- ed her and three other but then placed in a fam-
tion for the safety of the jury in Texas declined to in- spond to a request for women told them the law ily detention center. They
workers scheduled to tes- dict Planned Parenthood
and instead filed charges comment. had changed, that their were released in Novem-
against the pair for using The Trump administration children would be taken ber.
fake driver's licenses to get has acknowledged it sepa- away, and that they would Stanton Jones, a lawyer for
into Planned Parenthood rated more than 2,000 fam- be deported, the claim al- the families, said the fami-
meetings. ilies last year through the leges. lies were entitled to mon-
Those charges were implementation of a zero- The woman says another etary damages because
dropped in 2017, the same tolerance policy intended immigration officer woke of the government's "inex-
year California Attorney to crack down on Central her up at about 5 a.m. plicable cruelty."
General Xavier Beccera American migration at the days later, ordered her to "The government was
charged Daleiden and U.S.-Mexico border. Gov- bathe and clothe her son, harming children intention-
Merritt with 14 counts each ernment watchdogs have and then took her son into ally to try to advance what
of invasion of privacy.q also said it's unclear how another room. The woman it viewed as a policy objec-
many families were sepa- says she begged not to tive," Jones said. q