1/17/19
The Trump administration separated thousands more migrant children from their parents at the U.S. border than has previously been made public, according to an investigative report released Thursday, but the federal tracking system has been so poor that the precise number is hazy. According to the report issued by the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, the separated children include 118 taken between July and early November — after the administration halted a short-lived family separation effort that provoked a political firestorm and public outrage. The report estimates that thousands of other youngsters were taken starting early in the Trump administration, months before the government announced it would separate children in order to criminally prosecute their parents, through late last spring. Immigration enforcement officials say their biggest reason for transferring youngsters into HHS custody is that their parents had criminal histories. But information on the parents’ criminal records often was so sketchy, the report said, that it is unclear whether the separations were warranted or whether the children could be safely returned to their parents.
The findings draw fresh attention to the flawed data systems and poor communication between federal agencies, which left officials responsible for housing children and vetting their potential sponsors uncertain whether they had been split apart from relatives with whom they arrived. Asked Wednesday morning whether those systems are now adequate, assistant HHS inspector general Ann Maxwell replied: “the jury is still out on that.” Last fall, the Department of Homeland Security produced an unpublished report documenting the chaos triggered by the family separations the resulted from Trump’s short-lived “zero tolerance” crackdown. Among other things, the DHS report found that 860 migrant children were kept in Border Patrol holding cells longer than three days, and that inadequate steps were taken to track the identities of children too young to talk. In June, HHS’s refu*gee office opened a giant tent city in Tornillo, Tex., to house the ballooning number of migrant children, and more than 6,000 passed through it. After repeated complaints, including over inadequate background checks for the staff, HHS officials said last week that they had moved out all the children and were closing it down.