Title 42, the federal rule that allows border agents to expel asylum-seekers to Mexico without due process to prevent the spread of COVID-19, has made things even more difficult for the families, Revkin said. Under the policy, parents and their children are expelled to Mexico together but nonparental guardians are separated and expelled, while the children they traveled with are transferred to a U.S. facility, making it much harder to reunite them later, she said.
“These children have fled unspeakable dangers and traveled thousands of miles with these grandparents,” Revkin said. “To be separated again at the border is just tragic.”
Under U.S. law, children at the border must be separated from an adult unless that adult is a parent or legal guardian. The children are then transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, often in a group housing facility, rekindling images of children warehoused in border facilities under the Trump administration.
In most cases, determining if a child is in danger with a relative falls to border agents overwhelmed with high numbers of border crossers and not equipped or trained to determine child welfare, advocates said.
Federal officials track the number of children separated at the border from parents but no such numbers exist for nonparental separations, according to a spokesman at the U.S Department of Homeland Security. U.S. Customs and Border Protection would not comment further, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees migrant children in federal custody, did not reply to requests for comment and data for this story.