President Trump's order leaves fate of 2,000 detained children unclear

Kevin Johnson | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump stops family separation, but continues ‘zero tolerance’ Amid public outcry over the thousands of migrant children separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep families together. Here’s a wrap-up of everything that led to this moment.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's executive order Wednesday ending the practice of separating children from their illegal immigrant parents along the southwest border did not address the fate of more than 2,000 children already in custody.

Hours after the president issued the directive at the White House there was no indication that the detained children — some of them toddlers and infants — would be immediately reunited with their parents.

One official familiar with the scope of the president's order said that the directive only applied to new cases involving children arriving in the U.S., with illegal immigrant parents or guardians.

The official who is not authorized to comment publicly said that the order is entirely prospective and that the children already in detention would remain as their parents cases were adjudicated.

The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Brian Marriott, spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services which is managing the detainees' care, said late Wednesday that the agency was "awaiting further guidance" on the reunification of children.

"It is still very early," Marriott said. "Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors...and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program."

But Trump's order, which was intended to relieve a deepening humanitarian crisis on the border, only seemed to raise additional questions about how the policy would be implemented and who would be covered by it.

The ranking Democrats on the House Homeland Security and Judiciary committees issued a statement late Wednesday calling on the White House to further clarify its directive.

"We are troubled that amid all the fanfare of Donald Trump’s televised signing ceremony there was not a single mention of how the more than 2,000 children will be reunited with their families," Reps. Jerrold Nadler of New York and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi said in a joint statement. "Children are currently being held in facilities that are often at opposite ends of the country from their parents, and there appears to be no system for reuniting these families."

The lawmakers said the children already face "serious trauma from family separation and also from long-term detention."

The new order issued by Trump, who bowed to mounting pressure from his own party and members of his own family, would allow newly detained families of illegal immigrants to remain together while their parents are referred for prosecution on illegal entry charges.