Federal officials are scrambling, task forces are assembling, courthouses are swelling, and immigration lawyers are working overtime as a result of the Trump administration’s abrupt decision to begin — and then halt — the practice of separating families at the southern border.
The chaos sown by the past week of Trump’s harsh immigration policies is still being unwound, and it remains unclear whether the administration is prepared to coordinate across several government agencies to reunite these families.
After Attorney General Jeff Session announced in April that the Trump administration would implement a “zero-tolerance” policy to criminally prosecute border-crossers, more than 3,000 children were separated from their parents, as adults were routed to jails where children can’t be held.
Since then, according to immigration advocates, the adults and children separated at the border have been sent to facilities spanning 15 different states. Some of the adults appear to have been deported back to their home countries while their children remain in detention centers in the United States.
For days, Trump officials have avoided providing direct answers about how exactly they plan to help these families navigate the complex web of government bureaucracy — a maze stretching across Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Health and Human Services (HHS) — to locate each other again.
Generally, immigrants are apprehended by CBP and then handed over to ICE or HHS, depending on whether they’re adults or children. But HHS has historically overseen unaccompanied minors who crossed the border alone, so doesn’t have clear systems in place for keeping track of children’s relatives moving through a separate bureaucratic track that typically involves landing in DHS custody.
Ultimately, navigating this red tape to find a child is “incredibly challenging, and what I fear is that it might, in some cases, be impossible,” Wendy Young, who heads the legal support organization Kids in Need of Defense, told CNN.
The administration is slowly taking steps to work on the issue. DHS officials told reporters on Friday that 500 children had so far been safely restored to their families, and HHS set up a task force on Friday evening to work on reuniting immigrant families.
But a lot of questions remain. DHS declined to explain exactly what steps it took to facilitate reunification, or whether the children in question had all been in HHS custody. Democratic lawmakers are pushing for a formal investigation into the records that HHS and DHS keep, to establish whether it’s even possible for them to effectively coordinate to accomplish the goal of reuniting kids and parents.
The situation at the border remains a jumble, too. President Trump announced on Wednesday that while his administration would stop the inhumane practice of separating families, the “zero-tolerance” policy prosecuting all border-crossers would remain intact. In practice, however, CBP agents and DHS officials say they’re running out of space to detain families together, so they’re unsure how to implement the president’s directive.
In addition to leaving thousands of families in limbo, the chaos is also affecting vulnerable Republican candidates in the lead-up to the 2018 midterm elections. GOP aides and political strategists told The Hill they’re nervous about how the White House’s shifting rhetoric and swirling policy changes will affect their ability to campaign on a unified immigration policy message.
“It is very difficult. It is policy and governance by chaos, by accident and by reaction,” former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said.