https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/17/report-trump-administration-migrants-1093242
Trump administration separated thousands more migrants than previously known, federal watchdog says
"More children over a longer period of time" were separated at the border than commonly known, an investigator with the Department of Health and Human Services inspector general's office told reporters Thursday morning. "How many more children were separated is unknown, by us and HHS" because of failures to track families as they were being separated, he said.
HHS officials involved in caring for the separated children and reunifying families estimated "thousands" of additional children are separated at the border, the inspector general said.
However, HHS received at least 118 separated children between July and early November, according to the report. DHS provided "limited" information about the reason for those separations. In slightly more than half of those cases, border officials cited the parent's
criminal history as a reason to separate the families, although they did not always provide details. The court order requiring reunifications said family separations should only occur if border officials could specify when parents posed possible dangers to children or were otherwise unfit to care for them, the inspector general noted.
Federal investigators said they had no details about how many of the "thousands of separated children" who entered the care of HHS before the June 2018 court order had been reunited.
"We have no information about the status of the children who were released prior to the court order," Maxwell told reporters.