Currently, the parents of 545 children separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border have not been located, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.
The children were separated from their parents between 2017 and 2018 after crossing into the U.S. under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. It is feared that hundreds of parents may have been deported without their kids.
The court filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union is part of an ongoing effort to identify and reunite families. Despite a federal judge’s order to reunite the kids with their families, it was revealed last year that thousands of children, previously unacknowledged by the government, were separated from their families.
Despite a court-appointed steering committee’s efforts to locate the more than 1,100 children’s families, parents of 545 children have been found as of October 2020.
The filing estimates that about two-thirds of the parents have returned to their country of origin.
The missing children are presumed to be with sponsors in the U.S., and that many will likely try to stay.
The COVID-19 pandemic slowed reunification efforts, but “limited physical on-the-ground searches for separated parents has now resumed where possible to do so,” according to the filing.
