Review finds 1,712 additional families separated at border
SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration, under court order to determine how many additional families had been separated at the border prior to the nationwide rollout of the controversial zero tolerance policy, has so far identified 1,712 potential cases during an initial review, according to the official leading the effort.
The review — a painstaking evaluation of 47,000 case files — was launched a few weeks ago as the latest phase in the landmark family separation litigation in San Diego federal court.
A previous effort last summer sought to identify all children in government custody as of June 26 who had been separated, and to reunify them with their parents if desired. That process, involving some 2,800 families, has largely been completed.
But the scope of the Trump administration’s family separation practice was not widely known at the time. A federal audit earlier this year revealed authorities had been separating families for far longer than the May 2018 official start of the zero tolerance program, including a pilot project in Texas that began as early as July 2017.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the government to account for the additional separations, going back as far as July 1, 2017. The process will be more challenging than the previous effort, because these children have since been released from government shelters — either into the care of parents or sponsors, or because they turned 18.
During a hearing Friday, Cmdr. Jonathan White of U.S. Health and Human Services told the judge that his team had reviewed 13,000 case files so far.
Many of the files the team decided to tackle first already had clear indications of separations, so the large number was not unexpected, White said, according to a transcript of the hearing. The team also reviewed all case files of children under age 12, whether there were initial indications of separation or not.