Both parties blast family separation of migrants at hearing

WASHINGTON — Democrats on a House subcommittee demanded answers Thursday from Health and Human Services officials regarding how many children were actually separated from parents during the “zero tolerance” policy last spring at the southern border, after a report found that thousands more children could have been separated than the 2,700 previously reported.

“What’s been happening is more than irresponsible and sloppy. I think what we’re really talking about is state-sponsored child abuse, and I would go as far as to say kidnapping,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., said at a hearing by the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Many Democrats demanded to know whether HHS, which takes custody of the children after the Border Patrol arrests parents trying to cross the border, played a role in the policy, which was implemented last April by an executive order from President Donald Trump.

“We need to know what role HHS leaders played in formulating this policy, whether they made any effort to stop it and whether they raised any concerns about the harm it would do to the children who were separated. There is no evidence that HHS ever tried to stop this abhorrent policy,” said subcommittee Chairwoman Diana DeGette, D-Colo.

This was the first hearing by the newly held House Democratic majority on family separations, setting the tone on how Democrats will carry out oversight of the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The hearing comes after a January report by the HHS inspector general, who concluded that thousands more children could have been separated than previously reported and that there was probably no way to know how many.

Cmdr. Jonathan White of the U.S. Public Health Service said HHS played no role in implementing the policy.

The policy, announced in early April 2018 by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, was to intercept, arrest and prosecute all migrant families trying to enter the United States. After public outcry, Trump rescinded the order June 20, and a court later ordered the government to reunite parents and children.

“No one in HHS separated a single child from their parents,” White said, explaining that his department’s role was only to house and feed the children while other agencies carried out immigration legal proceedings. “We have the ability and have pursued reunification for every child in (the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s) care,” he said.

White said he did not take part in conversations on how to implement the policy. No one from the departments of Justice or Homeland Security testified.

The January IG report concluded that officials did not properly track how many children were actually separated. The report also found that from July 1 to Nov. 7, the Office of Refugee Resettlement received at least 118 children who DHS identified as separated from their parents after the policy was officially ended.

There are still 93 children in government custody who were separated from their parents at the border, according to a joint status report issued in February 2019.

Rep. Nanette Barragan, DCalif., called the IG report “devastating.”

“Not just because they pretty much lied to Congress, but they were withholding information from us. I think that anytime that you are going to separate parents and their children, you need to have a tracking system so that you are able to reunite them and know where they are,” she said.