Officials say ICE completely bungled migrant family reunifications last summer

Protesters demonstrating against family separation.
(Image credit: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

The Department of Homeland Security wasn't prepared for migrant family reunifications last summer, resulting in dozens of children having to sleep overnight in vans as they waited to be processed, NBC News reports.

Details are now emerging about an incident on Sunday, July 15, at Port Isabel Detention Center in Texas. That afternoon, 37 kids between the ages of 5 and 12 were driven to the center in order to be reunited with their parents; under the Trump administration's rules, they had been separated after crossing the border. The children were in the care of the nonprofit organization BCFS, and emails obtained by NBC News show that officials were frustrated by ICE's inability to smoothly process the children and reunite them with their parents.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.