U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not consistently give immigrant parents the option to bring their children with them when they were deported, according to a report released by Office of Inspector General (OIG) for the Department of Homeland Security (article available here).
OIG launched a review of ICE’s reunification practices after receiving complaints from immigrant parents who were removed from the U.S. by the previous administration. Consistent with the parents’ allegations, the watchdog found that from July 2017 — the time when the government started to increase criminal prosecutions of parents entering the U.S. illegally with their children under the previous administration’s “zero tolerance policy” — until the process became more standardized on July 12, 2018, ICE had deported at least 348 parents who were separated from their children without documenting whether they wanted to leave their kids behind.
The report confirmed that immigrant parents “did not consistently have the opportunity to reunify with their children before removal.” “Although DHS and ICE have claimed that parents removed without their children chose to leave them behind, there was no policy or standard process requiring ICE officers to ascertain, document, or honor parents’ decisions regarding their children,” the OIG wrote.
In its report, the OIG says that ICE removed some parents from the U.S. without their children despite having evidence that the parents wanted their children to return with them to their home country.
Along with its findings, the OIG issued two recommendations.
It requested that ICE, before removing parents who have a minor child, obtain and document each parent’s preference related to whether the child should be removed with them or remain in the U.S.
It also recommended that the agency coordinate with other government officials to provide information regarding parents who were already removed without documentation of their preferences.
Historically, ICE kept undocumented immigrant families together or released them when Customs and Border Protection detained them at the border.