Senators grill Trump official on whether deported parents agreed to leave children behind

A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official declined repeatedly at a congressional hearing Tuesday to say whether the agency can document that migrant parents captured at the border and deported under the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy were given the opportunity to take their children.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) quizzed Matthew Albence, executive associate director for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations arm, about a July 25 POLITICO article that reported up to 75 percent of deported migrant parents may never have granted consent for their children to stay behind in the U.S.


DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has repeatedly insisted that all migrant parents who are deported are given the opportunity to leave with their children. "The parents always have the choice to take the children with them," Nielsen told Fox News last week. "These are parents who have made the decision not to bring the children with them."

But “we don’t see it in the documentation,” a Trump administration official told POLITICO last week.

While the administration said in a court filing last week that it had reunited or released to sponsors more than 1,800 children in its custody, it still faces the daunting task of joining hundreds of children with parents who were deported.

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Durbin, the second-highest ranking Senate Democrat, pressed Albence repeatedly on whether ICE could demonstrate that its officers consistently asked parents whether they wished to be deported with their children. But rather than address how much documentation can be found, Albence replied that "it has been long-standing ICE policy" to give parents the option to be deported with their children.

“There clearly must be a piece of paper signed by that parent before our government would let that happen,” Durbin pressed. “Is there documentation for what you claim?"

“We are using a form developed by the ACLU and approved by the court to document these parents’ decisions,” Albence said, alluding to a document that a federal judge ordered ICE to use on July 10. The judge's order was in a class-action lawsuit over family separations brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Prior to that," Albence said, "we had additional forms that we had developed and utilized for this purpose.”

Durbin again asked Albence whether he could produce documentary proof that all deported parents who left without their children consented to leave those children behind.

“We can go into each file and see the records that are there, whatever paper records are in there, as well as what’s in our electronic system of records, where they will make notes,” Albence said. “The officers will make a note that the parent declined reunification, as well."

Grassley questioned Albence earlier in the hearing about the POLITICO report.

“Are ICE officers coercing parents to be deported, to leave their children behind, as POLITICO suggested?” Grassley asked.

“No," Albence answered. "There is longstanding ICE policy which dictates how a reunification may occur for an individual that is being detained and going through an immigration process."

Albence said that any parent slated for deportation “will have the opportunity to request that their child be removed with them to their home countries."

But POLITICO's administration source said last week that in most cases there was no evidence that migrant parents were ever granted that opportunity.

"A great many of these individuals do not wish to have their child return home with them,” Albence said. “The reason most of these individuals have come here in the first place is to get their children to the United States."

He added that "many" parents caught at the border are repeat offenders and will try to return.

“It’s easier for them to leave their child here, to go back to their home country and try to reenter this country again illegally as a single adult," he said.