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During a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee hearing on family separation Thursday, Trump administration officials, including the former deputy director of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), could not tell legislators how many children had been kidnapped from parents under the administration’s humanitarian disaster.
“Can anybody here on this panel challenge this? The U.S. does not know how many children have been separated from their parents,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois asked. She was met with silence. “No one,” she replied to herself. “Does anyone know how many are still separated from their parents?” More silence. “Nobody knows,” she again replied.
It was just one of the several stunning moments emerging from House Democrats’ first hearing on the 2018 “zero tolerance” policy, which resulted in the state-sanctioned kidnapping of over 2,500 children at the southern border. A watchdog report, however, found that potentially thousands more may have been separated as some administration officials were kept in the dark.
Jonathan White, a career official and former ORR deputy director, testified that he was seeing more and more children being referred to ORR in 2017, “but when he asked about it, he said he was told there was no new policy to separate families,” ABC News reported. White testified that he found about it the same way we did: on the news. “I was aware of the formal policy notification when the [former Attorney General Jeff Sessions] said it on television, on April 6.”
White’s testimony comes as Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen has finally relented and agreed to testify before House Democrats next month. Nielsen has lied about “zero tolerance,” falsely claiming there was no policy to separate families. In fact, she most likely signed off on it. White said he was never consulted about a policy—and would have opposed it had he been. "Neither I nor any career person in ORR would ever have supported such a policy proposal," he said. "Separating children from their parents poses significant risks of traumatic psychological injury to the child. The consequences of separation for many children will be lifelong."
Children separated under the policy continue to remain in U.S. custody, nearly 200 days past a federal judge’s reunification deadline. Six are “not eligible” for release, MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff reported, while a much larger group of 87 children continue in custody because the Trump administration claims that either they weren’t separated from a parent, or the parent is a danger to the child or declined reunification. But we know that the administration has falsely accused parents, without providing any evidence whatsoever, of having gang affiliations.
This has been a crime against humanity. Thursday’s hearing must be just the start of the accountability process that no official should be immune to. HHS Secretary Alex Azar shouldn’t have been allowed to skip out on the hearing and leave testimony responsibilities to White, when both Azar and Nielsen should be in jail for the administration continuing to violate the judge’s order for months now. If Nielsen is testifying next month, there’s no reason Azar shouldn’t be dragged in too.
Friday, Feb. 8, marks 197 days past the federal judge’s reunification deadline. Family separation remains a crisis.