Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, said the Obama administration attempted to keep “quiet” about how many unaccompanied minors were crossing the border and that children were being held in detention centers.
“There were large numbers of people coming in,” Cuellar said in an interview with CNN on Saturday. “The Obama administration was trying to keep this quiet.”
According to the Washington Post, nearly 70,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the border in 2014.
The comments come after the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Friday that nearly 2,000 minors were separated from guardians at the border since the Trump administration started enforcing a zero-tolerance policy to prosecute all illegal immigrants.
DHS officials verified Friday that 1,995 minors were taken away from accompanying adults while attempting to enter the U.S. between ports of entry between April 19 and May 31.
Minors who are split from their families as a result of the zero-tolerance policy will be housed by Health and Human Services.
But Cuellar pointed out that not all children crossing the border are being separated because some come alone.
“It’s not a matter that every single child we have in those centers are being separated because some of them are coming in alone,” Cuellar said.
He also pointed to immigrants bringing children across the border who are not their blood relatives in order to take advantage of U.S. immigration loopholes, which have since been rectified by Trump’s zero-tolerance policy.
