Government Still Unable To Find Parents of 337 Migrant Children Separated at Border

Despite a handful of tearful reunions earlier in the year, the long and arduous task of reuniting parents and children torn apart by the Trump Administration at the U.S. border doesn’t appear to be getting any easier.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez has reported that “attorneys are still trying to reach the parents of 337 migrant children who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border under the Trump administration, down from 368 in June, according to a federal court filing Wednesday, Aug. 11.”

According to Alvarez, “the filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union is part of an ongoing effort to identify and reunite families three years after the so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ policy was created.”

In July and early August, authorities successfully located the parents of 31 children, or approximately 10% of those families still needing to be identified and reunited.

“The Biden administration has committed to helping reunite families as part of a family reunification task force,” Alvarez said. “Officials have said they’re combing through thousands of records to determine how many families remain separated. Since the creation of the task force, 45 children have been reunified with their parents in the United States.”

The task of identifying and locating the parents has involved a number of different U.S. agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Justice Department, all working in tandem to discover any leads or additional information.

Although combing through the data they have and coordinating information between agencies is slow and time-consuming, officials say they hope it can continue to bring the broken families back together again, even if it’s just one child at a time.

 

Related: For more recent diversity and inclusion news, click here.

 

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