Feds are wary of removing migrant kids from sponsors

SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration says it would require extraordinary effort to reunite what may be thousands of migrant children who’ve been separated from their parents and that, even if it could, the children would likely be emotionally harmed.

Jonathan White, who leads the Health and Human Services Department’s efforts to reunite migrant children with their parents, said removing children from “sponsor” homes to rejoin their parents “would present grave child welfare concerns.” He said the government should focus on reuniting children currently in its custody, not those who have already been released to sponsors.

“It would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment and could be traumatic to the children,” White said in a court filing late Friday, citing his years of experience working with unaccompanied migrant children and background as a social worker.

The administration outlined its position in a court-ordered response to a government watchdog report last month that found that many more migrant children may have been split from their families than previously reported.

The government didn’t adequately track separated children before a federal judge here ruled in June that children in its custody be reunited with their parents.

It’s unknown how many families were split under a long-standing policy that allows separation under certain circumstances, such as serious criminal charges against a parent, concerns over the health and welfare of a child or medical concerns.

Ann Maxwell, Health and Human Services’ assistant inspector general for evaluations, said last month that the number of separated children was certainly larger than the 2,737 listed by the government in court documents.

The department’s inspector general report didn’t have a precise count, but Maxwell said staff estimated it to be in the thousands.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which wants U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw’s order to apply to children who were released to sponsors before his June 26 ruling, criticized the government’s position.

“The Trump administration’s response is a shocking concession that it can’t easily find thousands of children it ripped from parents and doesn’t even think it’s worth the time to locate each of them,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU attorney.

Last spring, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said anyone crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted, leading to widespread family separations. President Donald Trump retreated from this position amid an international outcry, days before the judge ordered that families be reunited.

Jallyn Sualog, deputy director of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, said in Friday’s filing that it would take up to eight hours to review each of its 47,083 cases between July 1, 2017, and Sabraw’s June order, which translates to 100 employees working up to 471 days. Such an assignment would “substantially imperil” operations without a “rapid, dramatic expansion” in staffing.