Lawyers say they can't track down parents of 545 migrant kids separated at U.S. border

A migrant child and her father.
(Image credit: Loren Elliott/AFP via Getty Images)

Lawyers enlisted to identify migrant families separated at the U.S. southern border during the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy said in a court filing on Tuesday they have not yet tracked down the parents of 545 children, and about two-thirds of those parents have been deported to Central America without their kids, NBC News reports.

The policy of separating migrant children from their parents went into effect in 2018, but under a pilot program that launched in 2017, more than 1,000 families were separated. A federal judge in California set up a "steering committee" of advocacy groups and law firms and told them to find the parents separated from their children in 2017. They have been able to contact the parents of more than 550 children, NBC News reports, and believe 25 more parents may be able to come back to the United States for reunification.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.