Lawyers who are attempting to reunite migrant children separated from their parents by the Trump administration reportedly determined there are more than 100 additional children whose parents are unable to be found.
In October, lawyers were unable to locate the parents of 545 children who had been separated by the Department of Homeland Security’s “zero tolerance” policy.
Now, they said that number is actually 666, according to NBC News, citing an email from Steven Herzog, the lawyer trying to reunite the families. More than 100 of those children were younger than 5 years old when they were separated.
Herzog said the increase is the result of the fact that the government “did not provide any phone number” to contact family members. Contact had been attempted for the previous 545 children.
“We would appreciate the government providing any available updated contact information, or other information that may be helpful in establishing contact for all 666 of these parents,” Herzog wrote.
In 2018, the Trump administration decided to implement a family separation policy after then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, NBC reported — anyone who attempted to enter the country illegally would be prosecuted, including parents who traveled with their children. At the time, officials acknowledged that prosecuting every undocumented immigrant would slow down the process considerably and, as a result, decided to send detained children to the Department of Health and Human Services.
The resulting influx of prosecutions also caused the share of children who were separated from their families for more than 100 days to skyrocket from less than 10% at the end of 2016 to 38% in 2018.
Since the policy was repealed, the share of children separated for that long has returned to below 10%. However, dozens of children remain in HHS custody after more than two years.
The Washington Examiner reached out to the DHS and the Department of Justice for comment.
