I read the status report. It’s:

- 283 children whose parents have not been found.
- 187 children whose parents have been found, but who have not been successfully contacted.
- 75 children whose parents have not been found, but telephonic outreach is expected to be successful. https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1318680898271768576

The status report from today makes clear that this claim from Miles Taylor is completely wrong.

283 children remain whose parents, after “time-consuming and arduous on-the-ground searches,” cannot be found and for whom telephonic outreach is not expected be successful. https://twitter.com/milestaylorusa/status/1318706417457631239

Setting aside that @MilesTaylorUSA misunderstood what today’s story was about, I want to talk about this a little more, though, because it reflects a narrative that people at DHS often used at the time reunification began—that many parents willingly gave up their kids.

Thoughts: https://twitter.com/milestaylorusa/status/1318706417457631239

First, many of the families still separated were from people subject to family separation during the El Paso Pilot Project.

Over 1,000 families broken apart before the nation even heard the term “Zero Tolerance.”

The process of reunifying these families has been more difficult.

By the time Judge Sabraw ordered family reunification, more than 1,000 parents had already been deported.

Around 2,000 were still in an ICE jail and waiting for court hearings.

But hundreds more had been ordered deported and were still in ICE custody. So what happened to them?

For those parents who had already been ordered deported, ICE gave them a “choice.”

- Be reunited and deported together, even if it means your child has to give up on asylum, or;
- Agree to give up your child, letting them have a chance at safety in the US.

Can you imagine the thoughts going through a parent’s mind?

The only way to reunite with your child is if you agree to take them back to the terrible situation you both fled from.

It’s no wonder some parents signed away their rights. But it gets even worse!

Some parents, when presented with that ICE form, didn’t know what they were signing.

That’s right—some parents were coerced by ICE into signing a form which gave up their rights to reunite with their kids.

How do I know? Because I talked to many of them as this happened!

After I came back from El Paso, we poured our efforts @immcouncil into a comprehensive complaint detailing all the coercion used by ICE to get people to sign away their rights. We uncovered so many terrible stories. https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/news/complaint-details-coercive-tactics-used-immigration-officials-separated-parents

What about all those parents deported before reunification, though?

Well, many of them have been found. And some have made the extraordinarily difficult choice, given no other options, not to ask for reunification because it might mean taking their child back to danger.