While the U.S. government is closely guarding information about immigrant children recently separated from their parents, members of Congress as well as state and local officials are sharing what they have been able to find out about young detainees in their areas.
The children are under federal jurisdiction, leaving local officials in the dark about all but a few details regarding children classified as “unaccompanied minors” being housed in their area.
Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti held a news conference Friday revealing that there were about 100 immigrant children staying in his city. He said he had been told the children were in group homes or staying with foster families, but he did not know where.
Garcetti said his staff had learned what it knew from activists and other groups that take in unaccompanied minors. He said most of the children were believed to be “among the very youngest” of those taken from their parents. He said he was worried that some might be too young to recognize their parents, complicating attempts to reunite families.
Kansas facility
In Topeka, Kansas, on Friday, officials from the state child welfare agency toured facilities of a group home known as The Villages, which has contracted with the federal government to house 50 unaccompanied minors. The executive director of The Villages, Sylvia Crawford, confirmed to The Kansas City Star that some of the children had been separated from their parents and had come from Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua.
In Chicago, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, told reporters that 66 children separated from their families were being housed in shelters across the city. He said one-third of the children were under age 5. Two-thirds, or more than 40, were younger than 13.
Durbin said he had toured one of the nine shelters operated by the Heartland Alliance, an immigrant aid group. He said the children were receiving proper care, although he said the separation from their families was “inhumane” and “cruel.”
Evelyn Diaz, president of Heartland Alliance, said her group had located about two-thirds of the children’s families, but that the process can be difficult when the parents are in detention.
“It’s like a scavenger hunt,” she said.
Reunited
Meanwhile, a migrant mother from Guatemala and her 7-year-old son were reunited early Friday after being separated a month ago at the U.S. border.
Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia and her son Darwin were reunited at Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland, a day after the mother had sued in federal court and the Justice Department agreed to release her son.
WATCH: Guatemalan Migrant Mother, Son Reunited
On Thursday, President Donald Trump changed the family separation policy, telling federal agencies not to separate immigrant families who had illegally crossed into the country from Mexico.
However, it was unclear when or how more than 2,300 children already separated from their families since April would be returned to their families.
How officials will handle the immigrant legal cases also remains unclear. A VOA reporter at an immigration court hearing in Brownsville, Texas, on Thursday morning said prosecutors dropped misdemeanor charges against 17 migrants. But the Justice Department later insisted it was not dropping charges against detained immigrants.
DOJ lawyers Thursday asked a federal judge in California for an emergency ruling that would allow them to detain minors with their legal guardians until their immigration cases were adjudicated. Authorities now may hold families in immigration detention for only 20 days. On average, current cases are taking 721 days to resolve.
Senior White House Correspondent Steve Herman, National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin, Justice Department Correspondent Masood Farivar and Aline Barros contributed to this report.
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