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Tracking Trump’s family separation: 565 kids are still apart from their parents. 24 are toddlers.

The Trump administration was suppose to reunite families they separated by July 26.

(Credit: Getty Images/Diana Ofosu)

Ever since the Trump administration began splitting up families at the border, there has been a lack of transparency when it comes to the number of children separated from their parents.

ThinkProgress has launched a project to hold the federal government accountable and track the number of children reunited with their families, as well as those who remain separated.

This post will be updated as new information becomes available.

 

According to the most recent government figures, the administration has reunited the majority of families they’ve separated, but 565 parents and their children remain apart, including 24 infants or toddlers. And the trauma of prolonged separation is undeniable.

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Here’s what we know about every child separated from their parents by the government, or 2,654 children, as of the last court filing dated 12 p.m. ET on August 16:

  • 1,616 kids are reunited with parents, but in ICE custody.
  • 473 kids were discharged “in other appropriate circumstances.” These kids could have turned 18 years old and been released or placed with sponsors, perhaps relatives. It’s unclear if the ACLU or the judge will count the latter as a “reunification,” as they’ve prioritized reuniting kids with their parents.

As for the 565 kids still separated weeks after the July 26 deadline, the government deemed the parents unfit (citing a “red flag background check”), deported them without their child, or said they “waived” their right to reunification. The parents of 366 children have been deported without their kids, and six of those children are under the age of 5.

Government lawyers say that upon further review, 46 kids in this total weren’t actually separated from their parents. But this includes four kids who are under 5 years old, so it’s unclear how else they got to the United States, unless it was with a parent or other caregiver, like a grandmother.

The court-mandated deadline undoubtedly prompted the government to act more swiftly than they might otherwise — although, they still failed to reunite all families they separated by July 26. While the deadline has long passed, this process is far from over. It’s unclear when every parent and child will be back together, but until that happens, ACLU and the Trump administration will be meeting weekly with U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw, who ordered a speedy reunification of the families in June.

Sabraw has called the government efforts so far “a remarkable achievement,” but also said officials still have to clean up their mess so kids don’t become “permanently orphaned.”

How we got here

Family separation at the border is a direct result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of criminally prosecuting migrants arriving at illegal entry points at the southern border since May. Because children are legally prohibited from being detained indefinitely, they are separated from their parents and sent to shelters across the country.

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The policy has not been properly enforced, however, and has even affected families who crossed at legal entry points. According to official government figures, at least seven families who arrived at official ports of entry have been separated. Additionally, the government has reported that at least one separated child and parent may have been U.S. citizens.

Many of the shelters holding the separated kids, run by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), have a terrible, documented history of abuse towards migrant children. As a ThinkProgress investigation revealed, an HHS-contracted shelter that cares for children separated at the border, in addition to unaccompanied minors, currently employs a man with a history of sex crimes against minors.

On June 26, a federal judge overseeing the ACLU lawsuit against the government ordered all 103 children under the age of 5 years old to be reunited with their parents by July 10 — an act which the government failed to do, reuniting only four of the roughly 100 children under 5 by the deadline. The judge also ruled that all children ages 5 and older (2,551 children) need to be reunited with parents by July 26. 

The administration cited a host of reasons why it couldn’t meet the first court deadline, including having deported at least 12 parents without their children, referencing one parent who has “an outstanding warrant” for a DUI, and noting that two adults aren’t parents but grandparents.

The administration didn’t provide an update on this group of children for a month.

Sabraw has repeatedly scolded HHS in court for its disorderly handling of reunification — a process that has forced the agency to divert about $200 million from other critical health programs. Officials hadn’t thoroughly documented parentage of kids and federal agencies, and began to DNA test every family member to determine a biological relationship. Some parents were even told to pay for DNA testing or other parts of the process, like transportation. One parent was told to wire around $1,900 to Western Union to be reunited with their child.

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“It is failing in this context,” Sabraw told the administration, though the judge has also credited officials for trying and acting in good faith.

In response to a filing by ACLU that aimed to stop further deportations, Sabraw said the government must temporarily hold swift deportations for separated families. The ACLU asked for seven days once they receive a final removal order so parents have time to think about whether they want to be deported with or without their kids, which the government is against.

The ACLU is arguing parents need time to think through if they want to leave the United States with their child, or have their child stay and fight their immigration court case. The judge is expected to decide any day now.

“If those parents want their children to go return with them — which, again, they had that opportunity once — we are working with the consular officials in the foreign governments to provide information that would help facilitate that, but we don’t have the legal authority to bring those individuals back into the country for reunification purposes,” the executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations within ICE, Matthew Albence, said in a press call in mid-July.

The ACLU has repeatedly stressed that the reunification process is “really a mess on the ground.” 

When families are reunited, some have been released at night in unfamiliar locations with no help. One mom and her 6-month-old child were left at a bus stop until midnight when they finally obtained a ticket with help from advocates.

Then, families must reckon with the experience and trauma of separation. Some kids had trouble immediately recognizing their moms or dads when they were reunited.

“He didn’t recognize me,” Mirce Alba Lopez told the New York Times of her 3-year-old son, Ederson, her eyes forming tears. “My joy turned temporarily to sadness.”

Ultimately kids are left traumatized, citing anxiety, eating disorders, and recurring nightmares.

The ACLU asked the judge for the administration to create a mental health fund for these migrants kids. It’s unclear whether the government will do this or whether it will face any consequences for its “zero tolerance” policy, which has failed to deter families from migrating to the United States as it was originally intended to do.

For now, it still needs to reunite them with their parents.

This post will be updated as more information is made available.

NOTE ON METHODOLOGY: To compile these graphics, ThinkProgress relied primarily on the ACLU’s interpretation of the government’s court filings. We deferred to the government only in cases when the ACLU recommended we do so. The information from government court filings is framed in terms of “class members,” which we are interpreting to mean parents who have been separated from their children, even though some media outlets are representing this category as children who have been separated from their parents. Previous versions of this story indicated we got the numbers wrong, but it’s more accurate to say that we updated the way we’re interpreting “class members.”