A Department of Homeland Security task force assigned with reuniting children separated from their families at the U.S. southern border found that at least 3,900 children were separated from their guardians during former President Donald Trump‘s administration, according to a new report.
The Trump administration separated some migrant families under a spring 2018 “Zero-Tolerance” policy that called for the prosecution of unauthorized border crossers, often causing children to be placed in federal custody. The Justice Department rescinded the policy in late January as part of President Joe Biden‘s agenda to reunite families separated at the border.
“In its first 120 days, the Task Force … identified nearly all of the children who were separated from their parents as a result of the Zero-Tolerance Policy and related initiatives,” DHS published in a report on Tuesday.
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Government watchdogs found the family separations began before and continued after the former administration’s policy was implemented. Biden’s Family Reunification Task Force will also attempt to determine if children were separated during the first six months of Trump’s presidency, beginning in January 2017.
Court filings from the American Civil Liberties Union list more than 5,500 identified children as separated from their families since the Trump administration, though data from the task force indicate it must still investigate 1,723 additional cases since July 2017.
If the cases are proven to be accurate, that would bring the task force’s total number of identified separated children to 5,636, close to the ACLU tally.
Of the 3,913 separated children, 1,786 have been reunified with a parent, mostly during the Trump administration’s tenure. Parents of an additional 1,965 children have been contacted, and the location of another 391 children has not been established.
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Since the reunification task force started in February, only seven children have been reunited with their parents. An additional 29 families are slated to be brought together in the coming weeks, according to the report.
