A top Team Trump official said Thursday that the number of family separations at the border has plummeted since last summer’s zero-tolerance policy was in effect.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan said fewer than 1,000 children have been separated from families out of 450,000 family groups that have crossed the border since October.
“I have acknowledged that this initiative, while well intended, lost the public trust and President Trump was right to end it,” he told the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating border problems.
“So I want to start with the rare portion of this. Fewer than 1,000 juveniles have been separated from their parents crossing the border this fiscal year. That’s with 450,000 crossings of family units.”
He said they were separated because of health and safety concerns, among other reasons.
“The vast majority” of families are kept together, he said.
That tally does not include children who come with older siblings, or aunts and uncles and grandparents and are separated under a longstanding policy meant to guard against human trafficking.
McAleenan said Congress would need to amend laws to allow border officers more discretion in order to keep those groups together.
His testimony came amid an outcry from Democrats and advocates over the treatment of migrants at the border, an internal investigation into Border Patrol agents who posted crude and mocking posts in a secret Facebook group and the move this week to effectively end asylum requests at the southern border.
Lawmakers mostly questioned McAleenan about the policy that led to the separation of more than 2,700 children from parents last year, while he emphasized the humanitarian crisis at the border.
“As I have testified and warned publicly, dozens of times this year and last, we are facing an unprecedented crisis at the border,” McAleenan told the committee.
Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, said McAleenan was an architect of the family separations.
“The administration wants to blame Democrats for this crisis, but it is the Trump administration’s own policies that are causing these problems,” Cummings said.
The number of border crossings dropped last month amid hot weather and a crackdown by Mexico on migrants to its own southern border.
McAleenan said facilities were less crowded, especially for children who are only supposed to be held in border holding stations for 72 hours.
Delays along the entire immigration system have forced migrants to wait in crowded border facilities not meant to hold people for more than a few days.
With AP