More than 200 migrant children who were separated from their parents after crossing the border are still in government custody, according to documents filed in court Monday night.
The latest government filings show that 245 children are still in the care of the federal government. The parents of 175 of those kids have already been removed from the U.S.
Of those children, 18 are in the process of being reunited with their parents in their country of origin, and 125 of them have parents who have been deported but indicated they don’t want their children brought back to their home country.
{mosads}The documents indicate that the parents of 27 kids are in the U.S., but have decided not to be reunified with their child. Three other children can’t be reunited because of safety concerns about the parent.
The latest figures come two days after President Trump declined to rule out reviving a family separation policy as a deterrent to illegal immigration. Pressed by Lesley Stahl on “60 Minutes” whether his administration would reinstitute such a policy, Trump declined to answer definitively.
“You can’t say yes or no,” Trump said. “What I can say is this: There are consequences from coming into a country, namely our country, illegally.”
The Trump administration faced overwhelming bipartisan backlash earlier this year after it implemented a “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of thousands of migrant families who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
The president insisted only Congress could act to curb the separations, but ultimately signed an executive order halting the practice. A federal judge later ordered the government to reunite the families that had been separated.
More than 2,000 children have been reunited with their families in the time since that ruling, according to Monday’s filing.
The Associated Press reported last week that state court judges in some cases have granted custody of migrant children to American families without notifying the children’s parents, who in many cases have been deported.