US government says it can’t find parents of another 100 migrant kids aged as young as 5
The US government said it cannot find the parents for 100 more children of immigrant families seperated at the border, some as young as five-years-old.
NBC News reported Monday that the number of separated children at the border is higher than previously thought, as last month there were 545, but now it is 666.
A total of 129 of those children were under 5 at the time of the separation, nearly 20% of all the kids.
These were families separated as a result of Donald Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy at the United States southern border with Mexico, which left many children to fend for themselves at internment camps while their parents were deported.
This was intended to ramp up criminal prosecution of immigrants entering the country illegally, but resulted in the displacement of thousands of families.
The vast majority of the children missing their parents were separated between April and June 2018 under the Trump administration.
Steven Herzog, the attorney leading the effort to reunite families, said that the number is higher because some of the children don’t even have a phone number to connect to anyone related to them.
Herzog wrote in an email to President Donald Trump’s lawyers, ‘We would appreciate the government providing any available updated contact information, or other information that may be helpful in establishing contact for all 666 of these parents.’
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, explained that the higher number of children came from having ‘no information’ provided about them from the government.
President-elect Joe Biden has committed to setting up a task force that would reunite families separated at the border.
It is still not clear if Biden plans on allowing the parents an opportunity to come back into the country and claim asylum.
Trump’s camps have been fraught with lawsuits and human rights violations, with many claiming disturbing abuses of power.
Some women have claimed that they were given hysterectomies without consent in Georgia, while others have reported a lack of food and sexual assault.
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