Less than 3,000 children under the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s care have been separated from their parents as a result of entering the United States illegally and fewer than 100 of that number are under the age of five, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar estimated Thursday.
“Multiple data set reviews … identified under 3,000 children in total, including 100 children under the age of five, in ORR care who may have been separated from purported parents who were taken into HHS custody,” Azar told reporters in a media call Thursday.
The less-than-3,000 estimate, which Azar said reaches back before the May 6 announcement by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, includes kids who were taken away from guardians while traveling from Central America to the U.S., prior to being taken into federal custody. However, Azar did not state how many had been confirmed as separated prior to crossing the border between ports of entry.
“Because of the court’s order we are starting with the largest data set that we have. We don’t want to be under-inclusive. We’re airing on the side of inclusion until we can rule any connection out. Those are currently in ORR care,” Azar said. “That’s why there is a bit of a range here because we continue to [update] … that data. We previously were working from only May 6 forward. The court’s order goes back indefinitely.”
If a child who arrived at the border and later told law enforcement or HHS officials that he or she was separated from a parent during the trip to the U.S., that would be documented as a separation and would have been factored into the 3,000 figure, Azar explained.
Azar said HHS is working overtime to process all children who have come through its custody in recent months to determine who reported being separated from a parent and then crosscheck that information with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — the other agencies handling family units and unaccompanied minors.
“[We’re] narrowing that with ICE, CBP data, the consular officials to get proof of ‘Yes, the child may have said they were traveling up with a parent, but were they actually detained with in fact, the father?'” Azar said.
HHS has until next Tuesday to comply with a district court judge’s decision to reunite children separated from parents due to the adults being prosecuted for first-time illegal entry as part of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy that was implemented in April.
The agency also confirmed it is DNA testing children and parents to ensure they are related.
“We will use every minute of every day to make sure that we can confirm parentage,” Azar vowed.
Another HHS official on the call said 11,800 minors remained in HHS care, contradicting Azar’s 3,000 figure. HHS did not respond to a request for clarification. Eighty percent of the 11,800 figure are teenagers — “mostly males who crossed the border on their own,” according to HHS.
