US immigration officials erred in placing separated children in foster homes while prosecuting parents as illegal border crossers, in part because they did not learn about a new Trump administration zero-tolerance memo until the measure was publicly announced, the General Accountability Office (GAO) said in an audit released on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 24th October, 2018) US immigration officials erred in placing separated children in foster homes while prosecuting parents as illegal border crossers, in part because they did not learn about a new Trump administration zero-tolerance memo until the measure was publicly announced, the General Accountability Office (GAO) said in an audit released on Wednesday.
"Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services officials told us they had no advance notice and had not planned for [family] reunifications," the GAO said. "These officials told GAO that they were unaware of the memo in advance of its public release."
As a result of the confusion surrounding the new policy, children were placed in foster homes or at group facilities throughout the US, as if they had crossed the border alone. A court later ordered the Trump administration to return children to their parents.
"This [court] order noted that ORR's [Office of Refugee Resettlement] standard procedures used to release UACs [Unaccompanied Alien Children] from its care to sponsors were not meant to apply to this case, in which parents and children who were apprehended together were separated by government officials," the GAO said.
In April and July 2018, US Customs and Border Protection and ORR, respectively, updated their databases to show whether a child was separated from parents or had crossed the border alone, the audit noted. However, it is too soon to know the extent to which these changes, if fully implemented, will consistently indicate when children have been separated from their parents, or will help reunify families.
In response to a June 26, 2018, court order to quickly reunify children separated from their parents, the government identified 2,654 children in ORR custody who potentially met reunification criteria, of which 437 children remained in custody as of September 10, according to the release.
