545 immigrant children seized at the border cannot find their missing parents

The children were separated by their family under the Trump administration.

A total of 545 immigrant children who were seized at the US Southern border with Mexico are now no longer able to find their parents, lawyers say.

The children were separated from their families between 2017 to 2018, and now the US federal government cannot reunite the children with their mothers and fathers, court documents said.

About 60 of the children were 5-years-old or younger when they were separated, the documents said.

Under the Trump administration’s order in June 2018, children were taken from their parents at the door and put in ‘cages’ under what was called a ‘zero tolerance policy.’

Many human rights organizations began investigating the practice, leading to a subsequent federal court order to reunify those families.

Nan Schivone is legal director of Justice in Motion, a group that is leading efforts to find the missing parents. She told The New York Times that the president is to blame for what has happened with these families.

‘The Trump administration had no plans to keep track of the families or ever reunite them and so that’s why we’re in the situation we’re in now, to try to account for each family,’ Schivone said.

A court-appointed committee attempted to reach the families of 1,030 children, but they were unable to find more than a half of them, as hundreds of parents have been deported with no records kept of where they were sent to.

A search for the parents was put on hold due to coronavirus, but the court documents said that the search has begun again.

‘Limited physical on-the-ground searches for separated parents has now resumed where possible to do so,’ the documents said.

Radio ads are now airing in Central America, and researchers are searching through villages on motorcycles through Guatemala and Honduras to find these parents.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt said that it will be a difficult, but necessary task to reunite these families.

‘Even before Covid, it was hard enough finding these families but we will not stop until we’ve found every one,’ Gelernt said. ‘Some of these children have been separated for years and were just babies at the time.’

As of June 2019, the total number of separated children is more than 5,500.

Two dozen immigrants have died in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody under the Trump administration, and seven children have died as well.

The United Nations has said they are ‘appalled by conditions’ inside of ICE detention camps.

Last month, a complaint was filed against an ICE internment camp in Georgia over hysterectomies given to immigrant women without their consent.

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