41,000 Unaccompanied Children Apprehended at US Border in Recent Months
Richard Hudson, acting chief of CBP, said that, in recent months, agents have apprehended 41,000 children without parents or guardians and encountered as many as a quarter of a million since 2014 at the U.S. border with Mexico.
Children traveling alone surged across the southern border under Mr. Obama in 2014, when border agents apprehended 68,541 trying to enter the United States. About 41,000 have been apprehended in the current fiscal year, a 16 percent increase from the same period in 2017.
Trump administration officials acknowledged Thursday that they have no system for tracking the tens of thousands of migrant children who are released from federal custody each year after traveling to the United States alone... The process for handling children who travel to the United States alone — known as “unaccompanied minors” — has not changed significantly under President Trump... the children are handed over to sponsors, most of whom are undocumented relatives or family friends.
Commander White acknowledged that the government stops keeping tabs on a child after a phone call that is made 30 days after he or she is released, even if no one answers.
More than half miss their hearings and are ordered deported “in absentia,” though most of those remain in the country anyway without legal status.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/us/trump-immigration-unaccompanied-minors.html
New record in 2017?
What now?