Pro bono lawyers tasked by a federal judge with identifying immigrant families separated by the Trump administration have successfully contacted the parents of 23 more children in the past six weeks, according to a report filed in court Wednesday.
That brings the number of known separated children whose parents have not yet been located down to 368.
Just because the parents have not been located by the lawyers, however, doesn’t mean the families remain separated. The parents of some of those 368 children may already have reunited with theiir children on their own, but because of poor record keeping by the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018, when families were systematically separated at the southwest border, their status and whereabouts have remained unknown.
The lawyers said in the court filing Wednesday that they believe 275 of the 368 remaining children’s parents were deported after they were separated. Efforts to track those parents down in their home countries are ongoing, the lawyers said. Approximately 80 children’s parents are believed to be in the U.S., and, the lawyers said, the government has not provided any information on the 13 other children or their parents.
