MigrantsParents of 545 Migrant Children Separated from Their Families Cannot Be Found

Published 21 October 2020

A court-appointed steering committee has been working to locate the families of about 2,700 children separated by DHS’ Zero Tolerance border policy, which separated children and toddlers from their parents. The policy was overturned in court in mid-2018, but the parents of many of the children have been deported to Guatemala and Honduras, leaving the children behind. The parents of 545 children are yet to be found.

A steering committee appointed by the court has been trying to locate the families of 1,030 children who were separated from their parents as part of DHS’s “Zero Tolerance” policy.

The parents of 545 of the separated children have not yet been found.

The Trump administration, under its Zero Tolerance policy, had been separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border. In mid-2018, a court put a stop to the policy, unless parents were determined to pose a “risk” to their children. About 2,700 families were reunited as a result of that court order.

Business Insider reports that it later emerged that before 2018, more than 1,000 families had been separated under an early version, or a “pilot,” of this policy. The ACLU said it believed that about two-thirds of those parents have been deported to their countries of origin, leaving their children in U.S. custody.

Volunteers of human rights organizations had been going door-to-door in big cities and small villages in Guatemala and Honduras in search of the deported parents.

CNN reports that the kids had been released from government custody, and are most likely with a sponsor American family.

The efforts to find the children’s parents was suspended in early summer owing to the coronavirus pandemic, but has now been resumed.

The ACLU and other organizations, which are part of the steering committee, have been able to contact 550 families of the separated children.