WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th November, 2019) The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was not equipped with the monitoring systems it needed to track thousands of separated migrant families during President Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy implementation, the DHS Inspector General said in a report.
"DHS did not have the information technology (IT) system functionality needed to track separated migrant families during the execution of the Zero Tolerance Policy," the report said on Wednesday.
The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) adopted various ad hoc methods to record and track family separations, but these methods led to widespread errors, the Inspector General said.
"Border Patrol reported that 3,014 children were separated from their families during the Zero Tolerance Policy period. However, our analysis determined that the number of family separations during the policy period may be greater than what DHS reported," the report said.
The border agency was unable to reunify 1,928 children and their parents in instances when the parents received little or no jail time, the department watchdog said.
"In a broader analysis of DHS data between the dates of October 1, 2017, to February 14, 2019, we identified an additional 1,233 children with potential family relationships that were not accurately recorded by CBP," the report noted.
The Trump administration expected that it would separate 26,000 children if the "zero tolerance" policy had been allowed to continue, the Inspector General added.
