Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Tuesday faced tough questions from senators on President Trump’s border policy, saying parents whose children were separated from them at the border should be able to reunite with them.
Azar told members of the Senate Finance Committee that more than 2,000 children have separated at the border from their parents under Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy to detain all illegal immigrants. HHS oversees the care for the undocumented minors who have been separated.
He said that HHS still has 2,047 undocumented minors in their care. Azar added that the parents remain in detention and so HHS cannot reunite them with their children.
[Related: About 500 kids reunited with families since May]
“They have been placed with a parent or other relative here in the United States,” Azar said.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked how many parents have been told where their child is.
Azar responded that every parent has access to information in order to find their child. He said the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement’s database can show where the child is, and they can use a hotline and have access to case managers to help parents learn the location of their child.
“There is no reason why any parent would not know where their child is located,” Azar said.
[Also read: Republican: HHS failed to connect conference call, so ‘I’m concerned with their ability of connecting kids’]
Wyden countered that he had heard from parents who have not found their children.
“This is just in my view part of the rosy responses the American people have been getting. It sure doesn’t line up with the first-hand accounts from parents that I heard from that desperately want to know where their children are,” he said.
After pressure from Congress and some Republicans, Trump signed an executive order last week to stop family separations and Congress is examining narrow legislation to address the separations.
