Fate of immigrant children separated from parents at Texas border is unclear

By Lomi KrielJune 21, 2018 Updated: June 21, 2018 10:06pm

The immediate fate of more than 2,300 immigrant children remains unclear as government officials and advocates scrambled Thursday to determine their next steps after President Donald Trump suddenly ended his policy of separating families apprehended at the border.

They will now be detained together, a move all but certain to result in legal challenges. But the president’s order does nothing to reunite the thousands of immigrant children, some only a few months old, who have already been taken from their parents and placed in government care.

“It’s chaos,” said Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “Everything is just moving really fast … I am not convinced they have a plan for reunifying those they have separated.”

Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services in charge of immigrant minors, said Thursday the agency has more than 2,440 children in its custody who are 12 and younger.

It’s unclear how many of those have been taken from their parents, but advocates say most may have been. Separated children tend to be younger than other so-called unaccompanied minors who came here alone, usually to find their families, and typically range between the ages of 10 and 17.

In all, the agency is housing about 11,800 children in more than 100 federal shelters across the country.

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