One legal aid organization, the Texas Civil Rights Project, is representing more than 300 parents and has been able to track down only two children. “Either the government wasn’t thinking at all about how they were going to put these families back together, or they decided they just didn’t care.”
?Further complicating matters are bureaucratic errors that could leave government officials unaware that a child’s parent is detained in the United States. Attorneys also worry that some toddlers, or children who speak indigenous languages, might not have been able to give officials their parents’ complete names.?Because of such complications, attorneys and former U.S. officials have begun speaking about the possibility of “permanent separations.”
?In the case of one Guatemalan family, the Border Patrol failed to note in its apprehension report that a mother and daughter crossed the border together, according to Wesevich. Without that information, government officials might not be aware that the child’s parent is detained in the United States. The chaotic effort to reunite immigrant parents with their separated kids