A new report by the Department of Homeland Security’s independent watchdog says the agency was not ready to carry out the zero-tolerance policy that led to immigrant families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The report is by Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General. It found some kids were detained for longer than the legal limit of three days, and migrant parents were given inconsistent or wrong information about being separated from their children.
The report verifies concerns raised when the government was separating families, said Mark Greenberg, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington D.C.
“It hadn’t been well planned for. That there wasn’t a tracking system to know what happened to children when they were separated from their parents,” Greenberg said.
A Homeland Security official wrote in a response that the report has valuable insight, but that part of it lacks context, and another portion combines issues the agency views as unrelated.
