Immigration officials knew about problems tracking migrant kids months before enacting separation policy

A damning new report from the Homeland Security Department's inspector general is out.

The report found that the DHS never had any proper information technology systems in place to track the number of separated migrant families under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy. Customs and Border Protection officials, per the inspector general, were aware of the technological deficiencies as early as November 2017, but the policy was enacted in May 2018 anyway, even though CBP hadn't adequately addressed the issues. The agency did adopt other methods to track and record separations, but those led to widespread errors, per the report.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.