It may take 2 years to identify 47,000 separated migrant children
Migrants walk towards El Chaparral port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico on June 21, 2018. Photo: Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images
The Trump administration said in a court filing that it could take 2 years for federal officials to identify the thousands of migrant children that were most likely separated from their parents before the government began collecting data through its "zero-tolerance" immigration policy in April 2018, the New York Times reports.
Details: The administration plans to apply a statistical analysis to about 47,000 children in order to locate families who entered the U.S. on or after July 1, 2017 — the earliest known date of separation — or when families had their child detained and released to a sponsor before a judge's reunification order on June 26, 2018. According to Lee Gelernt of the ACLU, about 2,800 children have been reunified with their families or "situated according to their parents' wishes."
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