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6/26/18:
HHS Secretary Alex Azar claimed migrant parents who have been separated from their kids under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy should be able to easily locate their children, countering reports about difficulties families have faced.
“There is no reason why any parent would not know where their child is located,” Azar testified at a Senate Finance Committee hearing this morning. Azar said he could locate “any child” in his department’s care “within seconds“ through an online government database.
7/5/18:
the Department of Health and Human Services (Alex Azar) told reporters it doesn’t know exactly how many of the children in its care were separated from parents. There are thousands of case files that indicate a child might have been separated from their parents. He was unwilling to give a specific number but said there were “fewer than 3,000” such children.
Records linking parents to their children “have disappeared” or have been “destroyed,” making positive identifications between children and family an uphill battle. HHS also sent out an email looking for volunteers to help scan through about 12,000 children’s records to determine which children were separated from their parents by the U.S. government and who arrived unaccompanied. “Everyone here is now participating in this process, including the Secretary who personally stayed until past midnight to assist,” the email read. It was previously reported that the agencies would now rely on DNA testing to match parents with children in the reunification process.
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