The US House Oversight Committee has released a new report on child separation at the U.S.-Mexico border that reveals how many children were separated from their parents and families upon entry into the United States and how long those separations lasted, according to this article from the Atlantic. "The Committee has now obtained new information about at least 2,648 children who were separated from their parents by the Trump Administration," reads the report. "This data does not include information about thousands of additional children who may have been separated prior to April 2018, information about children who were reunited with their parents prior to June 2018, or information about more than 700 additional children who have been separated by the Administration since June 2018." Therefore, these 2,648 children were separated from their families during a period of about three months from April to June 2018. "The large number of children found to have been separated, juxtaposed with the short period of time covered in the report, illustrates the magnitude of the calamity at the border last year," says the article.
Other findings from the report include:
- At least 18 children under 2 were taken from their parents from the start of April 2018 to the end of June 2018 and kept apart for durations of 20 days to six months.
- Hundreds of separated children were detained in Border Patrol facilities for longer than the 72 hours the law allows.
- Some separated children spent time in a “tent city” known to have substandard conditions.
- At least 30 children who were separated from their parents more than a year ago “still have not been reunited with a parent or released to a sponsor.”