7/31/2018

BORDER/CHILDREN/ICE/IMMIGRATION/SENATE/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official declined repeatedly at a congressional hearing Tuesday [7-31-18] to say whether the agency can document that migrant parents captured at the border and deported under the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy were given the opportunity to take their children. At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) quizzed Matthew Albence, executive associate director for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations arm, about a July 25 POLITICO article that reported up to 75 percent of deported migrant parents may never have granted consent for their children to stay behind in the U.S. DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has repeatedly insisted that all migrant parents who are deported are given the opportunity to leave with their children. ‘The parents always have the choice to take the children with them,’ Nielsen told Fox News last week. ‘These are parents who have made the decision not to bring the children with them.’ But ‘we don’t see it in the documentation,’ a Trump administration official told POLITICO last week. While the administration said in a court filing last week that it had reunited or released to sponsors more than 1,800 children in its custody, it still faces the daunting task of joining hundreds of children with parents who were deported.”

Ted Hesson, “Senators grill Trump official on whether deported parents agreed to leave children behind,” Politico, July 31, 2018 4:44 pm