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NBC News and The New York Time on Wednesday cited court documents in a case that challenges authorities’ practice.
In 2017, the Trump administration launched a controversial practice in which thousands of families were divided upon arrival in the United States and parents were deported to Mexico and Central America.
The attempt to reunite them has been going on for several years. It is now clear that the number of parents who have yet to be found is much higher than previously known.
Less than five years
About 60 percent of the children were under the age of five when they were separated from their parents, the documents show.
About 2,700 children were separated from their parents after crossing the border into the United States, authorities declared in the summer of 2018 after a court ordered them to map the extent.
A legally appointed “steering committee”, made up of a private law firm and various organizations, managed to locate all the families and give them the opportunity to meet.
Other 1,500
It later became clear that many more children were divorced from their parents, but the Trump administration noted that authorities had left them to caregivers, usually relatives or friends of families.
Following a court ruling in 2019, authorities acknowledged that another 1,556 children divorced their parents, 200 of them under the age of five.
The search was thus resumed, but the elapsed time, combined with the corona pandemic, has made the search difficult. The civil rights organization ACLU, which is involved in the search, estimates that about two-thirds of the parents they seek are back in their home countries.
Video: Trump declares a state of emergency at the border
