.@SenateDems asked for a public Judiciary Committee hearing on Trump’s cruel and immoral family separations with Administration witnesses testifying under oath. Instead, today we received a short private briefing that was closed to the press and public.
This is not how Congressional oversight is supposed to work. The American people have a right to know what is being done in their name. So I’m going to share some of what I learned.
I still haven’t received answers to dozens of questions I sent the Administration weeks ago after another private closed-door briefing I attended. Today Administration officials still couldn’t answer many basic questions about family reunification.
We were told the government has identified at least 180 parents who have been deported without being united with their children. The Administration said some of the 180 agreed to be deported but couldn’t (or wouldn’t) say how many.
The Administration told us that some parents have waived their children’s rights to be held in a facility that has a state child-welfare license and to be released after 20 days. These families are now being held in DHS detention centers.
But the Administration couldn’t (or wouldn’t) tell us how many families are detained and wouldn’t give us a copy of the waiver form they signed.
The Administration gave us a copy of this convoluted flowchart that apparently is being used to determine whether to reunite children with their parents and seems designed NOT to reunite families. 
The flowchart calls the separated children “UAC” - which means unaccompanied alien children. But they’re only unaccompanied because the Administration separated them from their parents!
It’s no wonder the judge overseeing the case said “HHS either does not understand the Court’s orders or is acting in defiance of them.”
The Administration even had the gall to tell us today that “nothing went wrong” with the family separations. When will the Republicans who control Congress hold the Administration accountable for this cruelty and incompetence?
