Thread by @weareoversight

For years, we’ve been investigating the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance initiative, the immigration policy that formalized the separation of children from families.

Here’s a breakdown of some of the important records we’ve uncovered. #FoiaFriday

This week, the @washingtonpost published an analysis of the ongoing effects of this policy. Nearly 1,000 children remain separated and hundreds have not even begun the process of reunification.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/…

Through public records requests and litigation, we’ve obtained records of misleading responses from the Department of Homeland Security to external inquiries about the policy.

Records we obtained from the DHS Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties contain conversations among officials about complaints of “inappropriate family separations” and “troubling accounts regarding abuse, mistreatment, and coercion” from parents of separated children.

A summary of investigations into CRCL complaints lists “new populations of U.S. orphans” and “permanent family separation” as “problematic outcomes” of the policy.

One memo considers the implementation of a “family-member locator system” to address issues like “inadequate protocols,” “inconsistency,” and “lack of collaboration.”

We’ve previously written about records obtained from DHS that provide further evidence of problems with detention capacity as well as the Trump administration’s failures to properly track children separated from their families.
americanoversight.org/in-the-documen…

We also obtained records from CRCL that contain complaints and allegations of abuse filed against Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol officers.
americanoversight.org/document/dhs-r…

The Atlantic recently published an archive of internal government documents — including these records obtained by American Oversight — related to the zero-tolerance initiative.
theatlantic.com/politics/archi…

Read our extensive timeline of events and records related to the creation and implementation of the policy here:
americanoversight.org/a-timeline-of-…