The Trump administration has identified at least 1,712 migrant children it may have separated from their parents in addition to those separated under the “zero tolerance” policy, according to court transcripts of a Friday hearing.
U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the Trump administration to identify children separated before the zero tolerance policy went into effect in May 2018, resulting in the separation of over 2,800 children. Sabraw previously ordered those migrant families to be reunited, but the additional children were identified more recently when the Inspector General for Health and Human Services estimated “thousands more” may have been separated before the policy was officially underway, NBC News reports.
Other potentially separated migrant children could still be identified. The government has reviewed the files of 4,108 children out of 50,000 so far.
The list of 1,712 children was sent to Customs and Border Protection for the “next phase of review,” said Commander Jonathan White, the Trump administration official who spearheaded the reunification of children separated during zero tolerance, as well as the current effort. White said the identification process started with the children most likely to have been separated, but their findings are not conclusive.
