'A Shameful Chapter': House Releases Comprehensive Report on Family Separations

The Trump administration’s family separation policy was marked by "reckless incompetence and intentional cruelty," according to a report released Thursday by the U.S. House Judiciary Committee.

The new report, released as the result of a 21-month investigation, shows that the administration’s plan to separate families at the U.S.-Mexico border began much earlier than many knew: within weeks of President Trump’s inauguration.

"It's an outrageous, shameful chapter in America's history," said Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, who serves on the Judiciary Committee and chairs the House Immigration Subcommittee.

The report also found that while a formal process of separations didn't start until the summer of 2017, that spring saw a spike in family separations. The percentage of children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) as a result of family separation jumped from 0.3% in November 2016 to 2.6% in March 2017.

While much of the report details information that has been widespread in the more than three years since separations began, it highlights the lack of communication between agencies under the Department of Homeland Security; particularly U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and ORR.

One example of this disorganization happened in July 2018, according to the report, after U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw in San Diego ordered the youngest group of separated children to be reunified with their parents. On July 16, 2018, "37 'tender age' children were approved for reunification with their parents at an ICE detention facility." But, after waiting eight hours at the facility, "ICE still had not processed any of the parents." ORR officials then took the children back to the buses, where they waited until late in the evening.

Lofgren said she was struck by the widespread knowledge of the program and the complicity of people within the administration.

"All the way from the secretary of Homeland Security to the attorney general to the head of the Border Patrol: They knew that they were taking these children away and they lacked the capacity to track them with their parents or to ever reunite them," Lofgren said.

Earlier this month, court documents detailed that lawyers and advocates were unable to find the parents of hundreds of children who'd been separated in 2017.

According to the committee's report, during that initial five-month pilot program in El Paso, Texas, where many of those 545 families were separated, Trump administration officials "discovered that the government was unable to track separated family members in a way that allowed for later reunification of children with their parents."

"And, knowing that, they went ahead and took thousands of children away from their parents anyway," Lofgren said. "Either it was an intentional human rights abuse or it was [done] with such a reckless disregard that it might as well have been an intentional human rights abuse."

This week, a group of doctors published a paper in the medical journal Pediatrics alleging that the federal government's treatment of separated families amounts to torture under international law. Lofgren said she agrees with that assessment.

"Children were taken from their parents without even being told what was going on. They never had a chance to even say goodbye to their parents. They were traumatized and removed to remote locations. Really there's no excuse for it, and it really is torture in some cases," she said.

In an effort to redress the policy of family separation, and numerous other issues at the border, Lofgren said she’s working on a comprehensive rewrite of the country’s Immigration and Nationality Act.

"The act hasn't really been rewritten in its entirety since 1965, and it doesn't well-serve the United States at this point," she said.

Lofgren plans to release the new version before the end of the year.