In 2018, a two-year-old was brought across the U.S.-Mexico border by parents, taken from family by U.S. Customs and Border Protection and transferred into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, which listed the event as a \u201czero tolerance separation\u201d under the controversial Trump administration border policy that ran through May and June 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Soon after, a federal judge ruled that families had to be reunited. However, CBP was unable to confirm that the two-year-old, once in its custody, was one of its zero tolerance separations. The problem was that the border agents didn\u2019t enter enough information about the child into the bureau\u2019s system that was supposed to track families during the Trump administration separation program at the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This anecdote is similar to that of a three-year-old and four-year-old highlighted in a Nov. 25 Department of Homeland Security inspector general report, which found that the department\u2019s IT infrastructure wasn\u2019t prepared for the child separation policy. Because of poor IT practices, the DHS IG was unable to confirm the number of families the department separated at the southern border \u2014 and officials were aware of the IT problems for more than six months before the policy went into effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the report, CBP used \u201cad hoc” methods to track family separation to account for a specific system that lacked the ability to separate family members, track separation after a family unit was deleted from the system and reunite family members. The inadequate infrastructure led to \u201cwidespread errors.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DHS estimated that its border patrol agents separated more than 3,000 children for their families during those 2018 months. The department estimates that it completed over 2,100 reunifications, but the IG found 136 children with potential family relationships that DHS didn\u2019t properly record. In a longer review of Oct. 1, 2017, to Feb. 14, 2019, the IG found another 1,233 children with potential family relationships that CBP didn\u2019t record properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWithout a reliable account of all family relationships, we could not validate the total number of separations, or reunifications,\u201d the IG wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The various processing techniques used by border patrol agents introduced \u201cdata errors\u201d that made it difficult for Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s Enforcement and Removal Operations to accurately track separated family members. DHS did make IT modifications in preparation for the policy, but they didn\u2019t completely absolve problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
DHS components had several IT systems available for tracking migrants throughout the process, including one platform, called ENFORCE (e3), that allowed agents to capture biographic, biometric and apprehension information on detainees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The e3 system, however, couldn\u2019t separate out adults referred for prosecution from the family they arrived with, meaning that border agents had to delete the entire family unit from the system to process family members as single adults and unaccompanied children. And, once records were deleted from the system, border agents couldn\u2019t view the family united identification number, which could only be retrieved by an IT specialist at CBP headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The same system also couldn\u2019t track separated family members because it didn\u2019t have the ability to search by last name, age range or apprehension date. Modifications to the system were made a month before the zero tolerance policy began, but the changes didn\u2019t help track separations under the policy. This led to the ad hoc tracking methods by agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLacking critical IT tracking capability, border patrol immediately struggled to keep pace with the high volume of migrant apprehensions and separations resulting from Zero Tolerance,\u201d the IG wrote. It later added, \u201cinstead, border patrol agents had to process the parents and their children together again in e3, assign new family unit numbers (potentially duplicating records), and further annotate the case files to state that family members were reunified.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report also found that the border patrol\u2019s poor tracking efforts led to difficulties for ICE, whose agents found the border patrol\u2019s separation data \u201cindecipherable\u201d and also struggled due to \u201cinadequate information\u201d provided by border patrol. The request process for transferring a child to HHS custody also lacked automation, meaning requests were sent over email. According to the report, it typically took five or more emails to place one child. One border patrol agent told the IG that she received 1,700 emails about child transfers during one week. HHS and DHS also had significant trouble sharing information with each other regarding the children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Top leadership at ICE and border patrol provided poor guidance on how to effectively implement the separation policy. While border patrol sent out a presentation to agents on how to document separation, there was no system training, guidance was not \u201cconsistently communicated\u201d and some staff members didn\u2019t receive guidance until days after the policy was in effect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The DHS IG made five recommendations, specifically recommending that the assistant commissioner of CBP\u2019s Office of Information and Technology work to make modifications to e3 to minimize user error and improve data quality. It also recommended that the DHS CIO work with ICE and CBP to improve their system interoperability. The department agreed with all the recommendations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general found that DHS IT infrastructure wasn’t prepared to handle the controversial “zero tolerance” family separation policy at the southern border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37981,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":14,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[106,31,110,14,33,9,40],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3242],"class_list":["post-18000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-it-cloud-report","category-it-networks","category-newsletters","category-federal-oversight","category-watchdogs"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"2Y256S34JZBOTAVDIZHHYVVIDQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/it-networks\/2019\/12\/02\/why-homeland-security-lost-track-of-kids-it-separated-at-the-border\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n