McALLEN, Texas — Two days after President Donald Trump ordered an end to the separation of families at the border, federal authorities Friday cast about for jail space to detain them together, leaving hundreds of parents in the dark on when they would be reunited with their children.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a notice saying it is looking into creating 15,000 beds for use in detaining immigrant families. A day earlier, the Pentagon agreed to provide space for as many as 20,000 migrants on U.S. military bases.
Beyond that, however, there was nothing but frustration and worry for many of the parents separated from their children and placed in detention centers for illegally entering the country over the past several weeks.
Some parents struggled to get in touch with youngsters being held in many cases hundreds of miles away, in places like New York and the Chicago area. Some said they didn’t even know where their children were.
Trump himself took a hard line on the crisis, accusing the Democrats of telling “phony stories of sadness and grief.” He met with parents who had children killed by immigrants in the country illegally to make the point that they are the real victims of weak borders.
“We cannot allow our country to be overrun by illegal immigrants,” the president tweeted.
More than 2,300 children were taken from their families at the border in recent weeks. A senior Trump administration official said that about 500 of them have been reunited since May.
Trump’s decision to stop separating families, announced Wednesday after a fierce international outcry, has led to confusion and uncertainty along the border.
Federal agencies are working to set up a centralized reunification process for all remaining children at a detention center in Texas, said the senior administration official, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
An ICE official said it is unclear how families will be reunified.
“It’s a big question. There have not been a lot of answers,” Henry Lucero, a director of field operations, confessed at a forum in Weslaco, Texas.
Lucero said family reunification isn’t new to the agency but the numbers are larger now. Parents are first asked if they wish to reunite and often elect to leave their children in the U.S. with caretakers.
In the meantime, federal authorities appear to be easing up on the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of prosecuting all adults caught illegally entering the U.S. — though the Justice Department flatly denied there has been any change.
The federal public defender’s office for the region that covers El Paso to San Antonio said in an email that prosecutors will no longer charge parents with illegally entering the U.S. if they have children with them.
Outside the federal courthouse in McAllen, immigration attorney Efren Olivares said 67 people were charged Friday morning with illegal entry, but none were parents with children. He said it was the first time since May 24 that that happened in McAllen.
