WASHINGTON: Top federal immigration officials went before Congress to defend their handling of President Donald Trump’s now-abandoned policy of separating migrant children from their families, saying they keep records of children in their custody. They also said they can document decisions by hundreds of detained parents to willingly leave the U.S. without their children, an assertion that has drawn skepticism from lawmakers.
“We do not leave our humanity behind when we report for duty,” Carla L. Provost, acting chief of the U.S. border patrol told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But the officials ran into bipartisan criticism from lawmakers appalled at the hundreds of migrant children who remain apart from their parents, more than a month after Trump dropped his family separation policy under fire from Democrats and Republicans alike.
The Judiciary panel’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California, called the separations “immoral and haphazard.” No. 2 Senate Democrat Richard Durbin of Illinois said he wanted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resign, saying the policy shows “the extremes this administration will go to punish families fleeing” horrible conditions, adding, “Someone in this administration has to accept responsibility.”
Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, said Trump’s crackdown on people illegally crossing the border from Mexico was well-intentioned but has had unintended consequences.
He said the administration has “mishandled” family separations. He also cited reports that immigrants have experienced sexual and other abuse at some government detention facilities and said those held must be treated humanely.
Grassley and Feinstein have sent a letter asking the inspectors general of the Homeland Security and Health and Human Services departments to investigate news organization’s reports of abuse of immigrants at detention centers.
“No one, no matter what their immigration status, should have to suffer such abuse,” Grassley said at the hearing.
Matthew Albence, an executive associate director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, described recreational and health care opportunities available at detention facilities and said he is “very comfortable” with the service they provide.
Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting migrants entering the U.S. without authorization, his separation of more than 2,500 children from their parents, and botched efforts to reunite many of them has drawn election-year criticism from both parties. More than 700 children remain separated, including more than 400 whose families have already left the U.S. without them.
Officials from ICE and Health and Human Services said they keep records of migrants who have been detained and have documentation of parents who left the U.S. without their children.
Commander Jonathan D. White of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, who is coordinating efforts to reunite divided families, called a family’s decision to leave children behind “a desperate last act of a parent” that he said is “unfathomable until you’ve walked in those parents’ shoes.”
Albence said ICE uses a court-approved form that documents decisions by some parents to leave the U.S. without their children. For the public health service, parents leaving without their children undergo an interview and then sign a form designating who will care for the children, White said.
Some migrants separated from their children have said they did not understand what they were signing. AP
