Former first lady Laura Bush called it "cruel" and "immoral." Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings called it "unconscionable." This newspaper's editorial board called it "counter to who we are as a people."

Now, nearly four months after public outcry forced the Trump administration to end its zero-tolerance immigration policy of separating children from parents arrested for crossing the border illegally, we learn that the government agencies charged with carrying out the policy were not equipped to do so.

According to a Department of Homeland Security Inspector General's report, "DHS was not fully prepared to implement the administration's zero-tolerance policy or to deal with some of its after-effects."

Those "after-effects" included over 2,500 children being torn from their families, many held for "extended periods in facilities intended solely for short-term detention," according to the report. Those facilities include sprawling tent cities like the one in Tornillo, Texas, which has announced expansion plans that will enable it to hold up to 3,800 children.

The report also said DHS “provided inconsistent information to aliens who arrived with children during zero tolerance, which resulted in some parents not understanding that they would be separated from their children, and being unable to communicate with their children after separation.” Moreover, the inspector general found that nearly 20 percent of children detained were held in “short-term” facilities for more than five days, far longer than the 72-hour stays the facilities were designed for.

The report also noted that “DHS struggled to identify, track and reunify families separated under Zero Tolerance due to limitations with its information technology systems, including a lack of integration between systems.”

All of this paints a picture of federal, state and local agencies overwhelmed by a White House policy that was not just “cruel” and “immoral” but also half-baked and ill-prepared. The terror of having one’s child taken away, then not being able to communicate with or know the child's whereabouts, is hard to imagine.

Yet while the family-separation policy ended June 20, the zero-tolerance policy has not. Whereas those without a criminal record entering the country illegally — including asylum-seekers — were once routinely released pending a court date, they are now arrested and jailed pending an appearance in court or deportation. This means the government is still detaining immigrants — and their children — in overcrowded shelters.

As The New York Times reported, the number of migrant children being detained skyrocketed to nearly 13,000 in September from 2,400 in May 2017. The majority, housed in the 100 or so migrant shelters across the country, arrived in the U.S. as unaccompanied minors, many teenagers fleeing gang violence and poverty in Central America.

In the past, migrant children were released to sponsors vetted by the government. But the Trump administration has slowed that process by calling for potential sponsors to be fingerprinted and the data shared with immigration authorities. Since potential sponsors are often family members or friends, often unauthorized, the new vetting policy has led to fewer sponsors coming forward and to overcrowded shelters.

In Texas, that means busloads are arriving each week — not from across the border but from other shelters in other states. Each week, hundreds are being transported to Tornillo, where they are separated by gender and housed in makeshift tents. Unlike permanent shelters, where schooling is required and the children’s care is overseen by state and local child-welfare agencies, temporary camps like Tornillo are unregulated except for Department of Health and Human Services guidelines. Sadly, in the past year the time that migrant children remain in custody has nearly doubled from 34 to 59 days.

So, while the un-American policy of separating families at the border has officially ended, zero tolerance continues to strain the system at all levels — at the border, in our swelling migrant shelters, and in our overwhelmed immigration courts.

What's important to remember is none of this is a product of state or local policies, but rather the direct result of a broken immigration system that can only be fixed by lawmakers in Washington. Meanwhile, there is no excuse for the excesses of the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policies, including its plans to phase out Temporary Protected Status for tens of thousands of migrants who have fled political persecution, violence and natural disasters in countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Sudan and Nepal.

With such draconian approaches to immigration policy in the U.S. — a land of immigrants, after all — perhaps it’s time to take down the plaque at the Statue of Liberty that famously reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,

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