Trump administration deported up to 463 immigrant parents without their children
By
Tom Hall
25 July 2018
As many as 463 immigrant parents may have been deported without being reunited with their children, according to filings made by the Trump administration in federal court on Monday. Previously, the government had admitted to only 12 parents being deported without their children.
The official status of the 463 parents remains uncertain. Federal lawyers stated in court Tuesday that they were reviewing these cases individually to determine whether these parents were deported or had “voluntarily” elected to leave without their children. Officially, about 130 of this group have agreed to be deported while leaving their children in the United States, either to stay with relatives or to exhaust their legal avenues to asylum.
The total number of parents and children separated under President Donald Trump’s infamous “zero tolerance” policy initiated in May has been constantly shifting in government accounts, with the total number of children being given as anywhere from between 2,000 and 3,000 over the last month. The uncertain and shifting figures demonstrates not only the government’s bureaucratic incompetence but a cruel indifference to the fate of families caught in Trump’s anti-immigrant dragnet.
The 463 are part of a larger group of 917 parents whom the government has deemed either “ineligible” or “not yet known to be eligible” to be reunited with their children. Other parents have been denied access to their children on the pretext of criminal records, communicable diseases or other issues, according to USA Today.
The Trump administration has reunited only 1,012 children with their parents since a federal judge ordered a halt to its cruel and…