Congressional Oversight and Reform Committee Critically Examines Trump Administration’s Child Separation Policies (2019)
From the Executive Summary:
On February 26, 2019, the Committee on Oversight and Reform voted on a bipartisan basis to authorize subpoenas to compel the Trump Administration to produce documents relating to its policy of separating immigrant children from their families. These subpoenas were served to the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) after they refused to provide this information voluntarily in response to bipartisan requests made six months earlier. This staff report has been prepared at the request of Chairman Elijah E. Cummings to summarize the data obtained by the Committee. This information is not complete. In many respects, it is woefully inadequate in terms of the volume of information produced and the number of separated children who remain unaccounted for, and the Committee will continue to press for additional information. Nevertheless, pursuant to the subpoenas, the Committee has now obtained new information about at least 2,648 children who were separated from their parents by the Trump Administration. Many of these children were brought by their parents to the United States to seek refuge from violence in Central America and elsewhere and to seek asylum under U.S. law.