Beginning in the middle of 2017, staffers with the Office of Refugee Resettlement began to notice an alarming increase in the number of separated migrant children who were being transferred to the agency from officials at the southern border. This was not normal—typically, the Health and Human Services agency sees unaccompanied minors, or children who come to the U.S. alone. Worried about the traumatic effects of family separation and the lack of immediate bed space for these children, ORR staffers took their concerns to superiors.
Those concerns went ignored, a new report from the Health and Human Services inspector general has found. “OIG found no evidence that these three senior HHS officials took action to protect children’s interests in response to the information and concerns raised by ORR staff,” the report said. The report describes officials’ intentional negligence regarding what ultimately became the family separation crisis, including superiors scolding staffers for putting concerns in writing and others finding out the family separation policy not from the Trump administration, but from the news.
The report is the latest in a number of government watchdog investigations continuing to expose the trauma, inhumanity, and chaos of the zero tolerance policy, which resulted in the state-sanctioned kidnapping of thousands of kids. A September 2019 HHS inspector general report found separated children suffered “fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress” as a result of being taken from their families, causing some to believe that “their parents had abandoned them,” or that their parents were dead. The latest report shows how much sheer negligence from the Trump administration led to this trauma.
“On the basis of interviews with and written responses from senior HHS officials, as well as a review of correspondence and interagency meeting records, OIG found no evidence that HHS was notified in advance by either DOJ or DHS that the zero-tolerance policy would be implemented,” the new report says. “In fact, senior HHS officials generally reported that they first learned of the spring 2018 implementation of zero-tolerance when it was reported by the media.”
“HHS’s lack of planning for the possibility of larger-scale family separation left the Department unable to provide prompt and appropriate care for separated children when the zero-tolerance policy was implemented,” the report continues. “Without sufficient bed capacity, HHS could not always place separated children in care provider facilities within 72 hours (as required by law), leaving hundreds inappropriately detained in Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody,” specifically, under Border Patrol watch.
Last year, Abner, a 17-year-old Guatemalan boy, described border agents physically assaulting detained children and being sleep-deprived in cold cells so crowded that the older kids tried to rest standing up so the younger ones could have a little extra space on the floor. Abner said the guards were cruel, mocking the children when they asked what time it was because the lights were always kept on. "Oh do you have a meeting to go to?” they would reply. This is no place for any child, yet the Department of Homeland Security inspector general said last year separated kids were frequently jailed days beyond the legal 72-hour limit.
But even when separated children were no longer under Border Patrol watch, the HHS inspector general found children’s detention continued to be prolonged by the administration’s actions—or inaction, rather. “Further, because no procedures or systems had been established to track separated families across HHS and DHS for later reunification, HHS struggled to identify separated children,” the report continued. “HHS also experienced challenges coordinating the reunification effort under overlapping court-imposed requirements.”
For those lucky enough to be able to reunify. Ordered by a federal judge in summer 2018 to reunite separated families, the Trump administration admitted to deporting hundreds of parents without their children, with some saying they were coerced by Immigration and Customs Enforcement into agreeing to be deported. In fact, earlier this year, parents who were unjustly deported without their kids returned to the U.S., following a historic decision from the same judge who issued the family reunification ruling. Among the 11 parents who fell under the judge’s order was one dad who’d been separated from his son since May 2018.
"Not knowing what happened to their parents haunted the children,” HHS investigators said one facility lead mental health clinician told them. “We couldn't tell them whether they would ultimately be reunited. It was challenging. We weren't notified initially about how to connect parents with their kids. The kids had lots of questions, but we had no answers for them." The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families, said in a statement “This report shows that high-level officials chose to ignore the warnings about the harms of family separation. It also raises serious questions about whether the lack of interagency communication has still not been fixed. Thousands of children are living with trauma because of this policy.”
