(Image source from: The Indian Express)

Thousands of children than previously believed were separated from their parents at the Southern border under Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy earlier this year, according to a report by government inspectors released Thursday.

According to the federal government, nearly 3,000 children were separated from their parents. Under Trump’s immigration policy, nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted and any children accompanying them were put into foster care or shelters.

The staff of the United States Department of Health and Human Services even before unveiling the zero-tolerance policy had noted a “sharp increase” in the number of children separated from the parent or guardian, according to the report from the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is the agency that oversees the care of children in federal custody.

As of December, about 2,737 children were separated from their parents under the policy and required to be united by a federal court order issued in June 2018.

But then that number does not actually represent the entire scope of family separations since the report said thousands of children may have been separated during an influx that began in 2017, before the accounting required by the court.

Therefore, the entire number of children separated from a parent or guardian by immigration authorities is “unknown,” because of the lack of a coordinated formal tracking system between the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the arm of Health and Human Services that takes in the migrant children, and the Department of Homeland Security, which separated the migrant children from their parents.

“This report confirms what we suspected: This cruel family separation practice was way bigger than the administration let on,” said Lee Gelernt, who challenged the policy in court on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We will be back in court and ask the judge to order the government to explain these numbers,” he said.

Though the immigration policy was framed to prosecute those who entered the U.S. illegally, it resulted in thousands of migrant parents whose children were separated, including infants and toddlers, spending months in agonized uncertainty, unable to communicate with their children and in umpteen cases not even knowing where the children were.

Under separate policies, the administration as well made it hard for relatives other than the children’s parents to take the children into their own homes.

Department of Homeland Security officials, which supervised the family separations at the border, have said they have separated families only when necessary, such as when a parent is facing a serious criminal prosecution, or when authorities have reason to believe that the adult accompanying the child is not an appropriate guardian.

“The report vindicates what DHS has long been saying,” said Katie Waldman, a spokeswoman for the department. “For more than a decade it was, and continues to be, standard for apprehended minors to be separated when the adult is not the parent or legal guardian, the child’s safety is at risk or serious criminal activity by the adult. We are required under the law that Congress passed to send all unaccompanied alien children to HHS.”

Ann Maxwell, the Health and Human Services Department’s assistant inspector general for evaluation and inspections, said the separations appeared to have been occurring for a full year before the court issued its order.

“Thousands of children were separated from parents and guardians, referred to HHS and released from HHS care before the court order,” Maxwell said in a conference call with reporters.

“The total number is unknown,” she said. “It is certainly more than 2,737, but how many more, precisely, is unknown.” Moreover, that number may never be known: Department officials, she said, had told her office that there were “no efforts underway to identify that. It would take away resources from children already in care.”

In an email after the call, Maxwell’s spokesman confirmed that inspectors believed the number of separated children may be “thousands” more than the 2,737 reported to the court.

-Sowmya Sangam