Dems seek answers on separation of families
‘Zero tolerance’ began earlier than disclosed
The Trump administration received its first official tongue-lashing Thursday by a Democrat-led committee over the “zero tolerance” policy that has led to thousands of migrant family separations along the southern border.
Thursday’s hearing marked the first attempt by Democrats to conduct oversight of the Trump administration’s ever-expanding immigration enforcement efforts.
One by one, Democratic members labeled the policy, announced by then Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and implemented by the Department of Homeland Security, as shameful, abhorrent and a “stain on the conscience of the U.S.”
“I really think that what we’re talking about is state-sponsored child abuse, and I would go as far as to say kidnapping of children,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., during the hearing of the Committee on Energy and Commerce’s oversight subcommittee.
Further enraging those members was the admission from a Department of Health and Human Services official and several government investigators
that the practice of family separations actually started a year before Sessions’ public announcement in April 2018, and that it still continues to this day, albeit in smaller numbers.
And since the administration has still not completed a process to identify and track all separated families, it remains unknown how many children were separated and are still being separated today.
“Exactly how many children were separated is unknown,” testified Ann Maxwell, assistant inspector general at Health and Human Services.
Cmdr. Jonathan White, who oversaw the care of minors for HHS, said he first raised concerns about the mass separation of families as far back as February 2017 when he noticed an increase in the number of separated children entering the system.
He told the committee he warned his superiors that a family separation policy would lead to psychological trauma for the children, and would overwhelm the ability of the department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which takes custody of migrant minors, to care for those children.
White said he was told in 2017 that no such policy existed. “I was told family separation wasn’t going to happen,” White said.
But then, in April 2018, he saw Sessions announce that very policy on TV. White said he was never consulted on the policy and had he been asked, he would have fought against it.
“Neither I nor any career person in ORR would ever have supported such a policy proposal,” White said. “Separating children from their parents poses significant risks of traumatic psychological injury to the child. The consequences of separation for many children will be lifelong.”
The family separation practice was supposed to end after a public outcry prompted President Donald Trump to sign an executive order overturning it. A few days later, a federal judge ordered that all separated families must be reunited. On Thursday, White said most of that work has been completed.
“Of the 2,816 children that we were able to identify as separated, only six remain who might potentially still be reunified,” he said.
But several government officials testified Thursday that the family separation practice continues and that the administration has made it difficult to understand why.
Maxwell, the assistant inspector general for HHS, said families can still be legally separated if the parent is deemed to be a danger to the child. But she said Homeland Security agents are giving only “limited information” about the ongoing separations when they hand the separated children over to HHS to care for them.
White said a cloud exists over that separation process, and urged members of the committee to pass a law to better define when a parent can be deemed a danger to the child, prompting a legal separation.
“The national discussion, including the discussion for legislators, is specifically what are the legitimate criteria for separation,” White said. “If you want to see that, that’s on y’all.”