Stymied By Waits To Seek Asylum Legally, Some Immigrants Crossed Illegally, A New Government Report Finds
Adolfo Flores
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on October 2, 2018, at 3:20 p.m. ET
The inability of immigration authorities to handle the number of people legally seeking asylum at ports of entry along the US border likely forces many to cross into the country illegally, according to a government report released Tuesday.
The report, issued by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, explored why the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance†policy created such chaos along the border last spring. The report reached many of the same conclusions that news coverage has already highlighted: DHS planned poorly for the impact of the policy on immigrants with small children, had no system for keeping track of what it called “pre-verbal children†who’d been separated from their parents, and no effective way to track children who’d been handed over to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services. At least 136 children separated from their parents before President Donald Trump ended the practice in June still have not been reunited with family, according to court documents.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/dhs-immigration-family-separation-asylum-seekers
