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Nearly 500 immigrant kids remain separated from parents. Most of their parents have been deported.

Twenty-two of those children are under the age of 5.

Nearly 500 children separated from their families by the Trump administration remain in custody. CREDIT: HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Nearly 500 children separated from their families by the Trump administration remain in custody. CREDIT: HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty Images

Nearly 500 migrant children are still separated from their parents, including 22 children under the age of five.

According to a government filing Thursday night, 497 of the 2,654 migrant children separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy are still being held in detention facilities, many of which have histories of abuse, mismanagement, or neglect.

The parents of 322 of those children have already been deported.

The Trump administration claims 167 parents of children still in custody waived their right to be reunited with their children, but as MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff noted Thursday night, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) strongly disputes that argument.

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“Some parents make have been coerced or misled by U.S. government actions that deprived the parents of their right to seek asylum,” the ACLU said in the filing. “These incidents include parents who were told that they needed to accept removal and not pursue asylum with their children, and parents who were required to sign documents they do not understand, in languages they do not speak, that had the effect of waiving their right to seek asylum.”

The deadline to reunite children between the ages of 5 and 17 with their parents was more than a month ago, on July 26 — two months after the Trump administration began its abusive practice of separating families at the border and placing them in detention facilities. The reunification deadline for children younger than 5, who had been placed in separate “tender-age” facilities, was earlier that month, on July 10.

The government only managed to meet those deadlines on technicalities, claiming it had reunited all families deemed “eligible” under government screening standards.

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The policy of criminally prosecuting people crossing the border illegally also affected some families crossing the border at legal checkpoints. According to government officials, seven families who arrived at official points of entry were separated, and the government also admitted that at least one separated parent and child may have been U.S. citizens.

As ThinkProgress’ Rebekah Entralgo and Amanda Gomez have noted, many of the shelters tasked with holding children separated from their families have documented histories of abuse, and one, as a ThinkProgress investigation revealed, employed a man with a history of sex crimes against minors.

Unfortunately, the nightmare doesn’t end even if families are reunited. Some children have not recognized their parents, and many have been traumatized, dealing with anxiety, eating disorders, and recurring nightmares.