Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said no children being returned to parents there and she’d seen no evidence that the process was underway.
Warren spent two hours inside the facility speaking with immigration officials and detained immigrant mothers Sunday night and said there were no reunifications to report. She said she spoke with nine women: “In every case, they were lied to. In every case, save one, they have not spoken with their children. And in every case, they do not know where their children are.”
The Department of Homeland Security released its plan for reuniting children who have been separated from their parents as a result of the president's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, but in a fact sheet issued on Saturday, it provided no timeline for when those reunifications will happen.
In May, the Trump administration rolled out a policy of criminally charging everyone caught trying to cross the border illegally into the United States.
As a result, parents, many fleeing violence-plagued countries in South America, were locked up while their children were sent to facilities run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The UN human rights office said the U.S. policy of putting immigrant children in detention centers harms their development and "may amount to torture." 11,786 children are in U.S. detention facilities. The Trump administration plans to place 20,000 more in shelters this year.
Amid increasing pressure on the US government over its controversial policy of separating migrant children from their parents at the Mexican border, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant on Friday night because she works for President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was confronted by protesters at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, DC Protesters yelled "Shame! Shame!"
Meanwhile, House Republicans leaders are considering separate legislation that would address family separations at the border, a GOP lawmaker said Monday.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has said he prefers to see parents and children detained together: “We do not want children taken away from their parents,” he said.
The consensus immigration bill would make citizenship a possibility for “Dreamer” immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. when young. It would also finance Trump’s aspirational $25 billion wall with Mexico and curb government agencies from wrenching migrant children from detained parents.
