Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's executive order reversing course on family separations has not changed anything in terms of putting families that have already been separated back together, a government official confirmed Wednesday.

The agency later walked back the statement but said any further plans to reunite families were still in development.

The executive order does not speak to any families that have already been separated -- and existing policies place the onus on parents to find their children in Department of Health and Human Services custody and seek to reunite with them.

On Wednesday afternoon, an HHS spokesman said nothing had changed for the children in its care.

"For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual," HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe told CNN.

Later Wednesday, the agency put out a statement from Brian Marriott, a senior communications official at Administration for Children and Families, the same division of HHS. Though the statement said Wolfe "misspoke" about the executive order, Marriott did not say a clear plan for putting children back with the parents they had been separated from was in place.

"It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter," Marriott said. "Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors in HHS/ORR funded facilities and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of UACs, and the administration is working towards that for those UACs currently in HHS custody."

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its own plans to implement the executive order.

The sponsorship process -- which finds friends, relatives or other suitable volunteers in the US for children in the custody of HHS -- is built mainly for children who come to the US illegally alone, as has traditionally been the focus of HHS.

But Trump's decision to criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing the border illegally -- even if they have children with them -- has resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents and essentially defined as alone, then placed in HHS custody.

The existing sponsorship process does not include any procedures for proactively reuniting children with parents who brought them to the US and may be in government custody, though theoretically once released from custody a parent could apply to sponsor their child's release.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said at a Washington Post event on Wednesday that his agency tries to keep track of parents.

"We keep in touch with the parents," Azar said. "Even under any circumstance we're working to always be in touch with the parents to ensure placement with relatives, and if parents are released, to ensure that they can go to the parents if the parents are appropriate sponsors, if there's no reason why a child would be in jeopardy. We'll keep working to place them with sponsors."

But that is not the process described by those on the ground -- nor articulated in any information about reunification distributed by the agencies to parents or reporters.

It also says, "ICE will work with detained parents to provide regular communication with their children through video teleconferencing, phone and tablets."

According to government figures, thousands of children have been separated from their parents already. From April 19 through the end of May, 1,995 children were separated due to the administration's zero tolerance policy, and 2,342 were separated from May 5 to June 9. The administration has not provided a total number for those overlapping time frames, nor information on how many children are still in government custody or have been returned to their parents.

Advocates working with immigrants say the system is anything but straightforward and functional.

The process to find one's child is "incredibly challenging and what I fear is that it might, in some cases, be impossible," said Wendy Young, president of the advocacy and legal support organization Kids in Need of Defense and an immigration policy expert.

"It's just very difficult to find somebody, especially after the parent's been deported," Young said, saying parents often return to remote, rural areas without stable phone lines. "The other thing to remember is that these people are going back to the same dangerous circumstances they fled ... and they are targeted once they're back."

"That's nuts," the Texas Republican said.

A series of barriers make it very difficult for parents who have been separated from their children under the administration's zero tolerance border policy to reunite with them, according to experts on the system and those who work with immigrants.

Parents are supposed to call hotlines to find their children, but they're difficult to navigate. Many of the families come from remote areas in Central America and are unfamiliar with US systems, and are likely to be distrustful of government. They're housed in facilities with limited access to phones and the ability to receive calls. The government does not provide any legal representation to immigrants in deportation cases automatically, so it is up to the detained immigrants to find lawyers who can help them.

Once the parent is in an adult detention facility, it is unlikely HHS can release their child back to them, as they would not qualify as a sponsor. The DHS has not made clear any policy to move those parents to family detention to be reunited with their kids, aside from its designated removal facility.

"When the family separation policy was implemented, there doesn't seem to have been any planning as to how parents were going to know where their children were, how children were going to know where their parents were, how they were going to be able to communicate and how they would be able to be reunited," said Mark Greenberg, an expert at the Migration Policy Institute who ran the HHS department that cares for undocumented children in the previous administration.

"So at this point there are probably several thousand children in the custody of (HHS) in shelters for unaccompanied children and large numbers of them probably don't know where their parent is and don't know how to communicate with their parent," he continued. "And when parents are in detention, there are clearly significant problems in being able to talk with their children. When parents are being deported, there doesn't seem to be any process in place for figuring what happens next for their children."

Once adults are referred for criminal charges and turned over to federal law enforcement, their children are deemed unaccompanied alien children and given to HHS.

Their cases are then split -- for the immigration courts who will decide if they stay in the US and in terms of which government agency is housing and keeping track of them.

Because adult cases tend to move much more quickly than those for children, parents may get deportation orders before their kids' cases are heard.

Experts who work with the families that have already been separated, like Young, say they are working with people in Central America that they believe have already been deported by this administration without their kids.

The policies do provide for a hotline parents can call, in theory, to locate their children. But advocates who have worked with immigrants trying to use the hotline have described a confusing and ineffective process.

Forms for parents to fill out for HHS obtained by CNN explain to the parents in Spanish that their children are considered unaccompanied minors and that they can offer up information about potential sponsors for their children. But if they don't provide that information, the document says, the government cannot guarantee the child will be placed with someone of the parents' choice.

In ICE custody or in jail, parents can't receive phone calls. Meanwhile, most HHS facilities require people trying to speak with a child to leave their information for a call back, so that HHS can make sure the person is someone authorized to speak to the child, advocates say.

"The bottom line is they didn't think through family reunification when they launched this policy because it wasn't of interest to them. It wasn't a concern," Young said.

"It's deeply concerning that it's not clear if there are any plans for how to provide for reunification of the separated families and children," Greenberg echoed. "As a threshold matter, it will be very difficult to do reunification if parents and children don't know where each other are."</s>More than 2,300 children have been forcibly separated from their parents as the result of a “zero-tolerance” policy enacted by the US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice over the past weeks.

Announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the policy calls for the prosecution of anyone who attempts to cross the border illegally. Since children aren’t being prosecuted but their parents are, families have been separated, with adult cases handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and children handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Facing widespread public backlash, President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday that called for detaining families together.

But it’s unclear what will happen to the families that have already been broken up. After news reports that there was no plan in place to reunite children and parents, Trump said on Thursday that he’d directed agencies to reunite families. Yet attorneys have said that in many cases, no one is sure where children were sent, making a reunion difficult and complicated.

In the separation cases that have already happened, children as young as 8 months old have been sent to foster care systems. Reporters have described some shelters at the border as prison-like. Parents have said their children were torn away from them while breastfeeding or taken away for a bath then never returned.

Groups of pediatricians and mental-health experts have said that the trauma of these separations could cause irreversible lifelong damage. Researchers have identified many of the ways that family separation and detention can affect children. We’ve listed the primary findings of that research below, drawing from previous reporting on the topic and a Twitter thread from Dr. Aaron Carroll, a researcher, author, and pediatrician.

Detaining children and separating families can lead people to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The experience of being detained increases risks for PTSD for anyone.

In a systematic review of research on detained asylum seekers – including children, adolescents, and adults – researchers found that detention was linked to high rates of PTSD. These rates varied, but grew more severe the longer individuals were detained.

The detainees in these studies were not generally forcibly separated from families. But the trauma of family separation further increases PTSD risk, according to the American Academy of Pediatric, since kids become more vulnerable to stress and trauma without their caregiver.

Plus, by the time many of the kids who reach the border end up in the hands of the Border Patrol or the Office of Refugee Resettlement, many have already experienced trauma.

Jodi Berger Cardoso, an assistant professor of social work at the University of Houston, has researched the mental health of unaccompanied child migrants (who had not been forcibly separated from parents). She found that those kids had experienced an average of eight traumatic life events – a clinical category that includes experiences like kidnapping, sexual assault, and witnessing violent crimes. About 60% of those kids met the criteria for PTSD and 30% for depressive disorder.

Detention and family separation also raise the risk of anxiety and depression.

Dr. Lisa Fortuna, medical director for child and adolescent psychiatry at Boston Medical Center, told Business Insider that the removal of a caregiver can create acute distress that harms a child’s ability to cope and self-soothe, which can lead to depression and anxiety.

Detainment can also have this effect. In the aforementioned review of studies on detained asylum seekers, one study found that rates of depression and anxiety both exceeded 75%. Another study of asylum seekers of all ages in the US found that the longer someone remained in detention, the higher their rates of depression and anxiety.

That risk can be exacerbated when the experience of detention is especially traumatic. The nonprofit investigative journalism organization Reveal recently reported that in facilities where kids from the border have been held, children have been sexually assaulted, forcibly administered psychotropic drugs, had medical issues left untreated, and more. Most mental health conditions have their roots in childhood, meaning that these traumas could have life-long impacts.

Adult members of detained family units also report high levels of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and self-harm, since “[d]etention itself undermines parental authority and capacity to respond to their children’s needs,” according to an extensive analysis of research by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Keeping kids away from their parents can harm their developing brains.

Fortuna said the depression, anxiety, and PTSD that children experience when they are separated from caretakers can be especially harmful to vulnerable developing brains.

“What we find from a neurobiological sense is that the circuitry in the brain that is a fear response can be actually harmed,” Fortuna said. In other words, the parts of the brain that manage fear responses – the amygdala and hippocampus -develop differently in traumatized children.

That can alter their emotional experiences for the rest of their lives, Fortuna explained, which raises risks for a variety of mental health problems as they get older.

Experts say that even a temporary separation can permanently transform these parts of the brain.

For that reason, Fortuna wrote in an amicus brief for an ACLU case that family separation can cause “irreversible harm” for children.

The trauma of separation and detention raise risks of self-harm and suicidal ideation.

Jail-like detention can trigger “self-harm, suicidal ideation, [and] suicide attempts,” according to Laurie Heffron, an assistant professor of social work at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas. Heffron works with immigrants and women who have experienced domestic and sexual violence.

In several studies included in the previously mentioned review of research on detained young asylum seekers, suicidal ideation became common in more than half of the children and adolescents studied. Between a quarter and a third of children and adults who had never previously engaged in self harm began to do so, the studies found.

Much of this research doesn’t account for the additional trauma of forced family separation on top of detention, but it indicates that detention itself is harmful.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a statement Wednesday addressing the lasting consequences of the family separation policy.

“Most mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders have their roots in childhood and adolescence, and childhood trauma has emerged as a strong risk factor for later suicidal behavior,” the statement said.

Research indicates that detention of families and asylum seekers will raise already high levels of psychological disturbance and psychopathology.

A study of refugee children in Britain found that asylum seekers had more than triple the average level of psychological disturbance, which means they’d been exposed to trauma and had trouble with emotional or behavioral regulation.

An Australian study of child and adult asylum seekers found “very high levels of psychopathology,” a term for mental disorders. This trend was “attributable to traumatic experiences in detention and, for children, the impact of indefinite detention on their caregivers,” the study authors wrote.

“What we know about folks who’ve experienced trauma is they need to feel safe,” Heffron told Business Insider. “Currently we’re doing the opposite of that. Not only are people not feeling safe emotionally because they’re separated from their families, they’re oftentimes not feeling safe physically because of the conditions of detention.”

The effects of this significant trauma may ripple through to future generations.

“Historically when things have happened like this – from the literature – when you have this accumulation of trauma and you break up families, you have a direct negative impact on the children, the caregivers, and potentially intergenerational bad effects,” Fortuna said.

Researchers have linked the experience of Native Americans who were pressured to relocate away from tribes and family groups in the 1950s to problems with substance abuse and depression. Depression and juvenile behavior issues persisted through the next generation as well.

In Australia, as many as 100,000 children from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were removed from their families from the late 1800s through 1960s and placed with white families or in government institutions to assimilate them into majority culture. Data shows that people who were forcibly separated from their families as children were almost twice as likely to be charged with a crime as adults, 60% more likely to have alcohol use disorders, and more than twice as likely to have gambling problems.

Surveys found that the children of people who’d been separated from their parents in Australia had more than double the average risk of emotional and behavioral difficulties.

Because of these alarming risks (and others), a number of scientific institutions have come out against family-separation policies.

Regardless of what happens next, the trauma of the family separations that already happened will continue to affect kids and families. So warnings from scientific associations about these policies are still urgent.

According to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, “these family separations jeopardize the short- and long-term health and well-being of the children involved.”

The Academies’ statement went on to cite “a body of scientific evidence that underscores the potential for lifelong, harmful consequences for these children and based on human rights considerations.”

Similar condemnations were issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, and the United Nations human rights office.

“The administration’s policy of separating children from their families as they attempt to cross into the United States without documentation is not only needless and cruel, it threatens the mental and physical health of both the children and their caregivers,” the American Psychological Association said.

Despite Trump’s recent order, there are still many questions about what will happen to families at the border.

Family separation hasn’t fully ended until the more than 2,300 children who’ve been separated from their parents are reunited with their families. Once that process starts, children have to be found and connected to parents, some who have already been deported. That could take a while.

Another complication is that the new executive order says the Trump administration will detain families together “where appropriate and consistent with law and available resources,” but many immigration lawyers say that wording leaves the door open for continued family separation.

Plus, as of Thursday, there are still major questions about the status of the zero-tolerance policy. If it is still in effect, experts are unsure if Trump’s recent executive order will stand.

According to a 1997 court settlement known as the Flores agreement, the government cannot keep children in detention for longer than 20 days. Trump’s new order directs Sessions to find a way to amend the Flores settlement and detain families together indefinitely, essentially creating internment camps. So it’s possible that a court could reverse this order. That would mean family separation could resume, unless the zero-tolerance policy is reversed or Congress settles on some sort of immigration reform package.</s>Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's executive order reversing course on family separations has not changed anything in terms of putting families that have already been separated back together, a government official confirmed Wednesday.

The agency later walked back the statement but said any further plans to reunite families were still in development.

The executive order does not speak to any families that have already been separated -- and existing policies place the onus on parents to find their children in Department of Health and Human Services custody and seek to reunite with them.

On Wednesday afternoon, an HHS spokesman said nothing had changed for the children in its care.

"For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual," HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe told CNN.

Later Wednesday, the agency put out a statement from Brian Marriott, a senior communications official at Administration for Children and Families, the same division of HHS. Though the statement said Wolfe "misspoke" about the executive order, Marriott did not say a clear plan for putting children back with the parents they had been separated from was in place.

"It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter," Marriott said. "Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors in HHS/ORR funded facilities and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of UACs, and the administration is working towards that for those UACs currently in HHS custody."

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its own plans to implement the executive order.

The sponsorship process -- which finds friends, relatives or other suitable volunteers in the US for children in the custody of HHS -- is built mainly for children who come to the US illegally alone, as has traditionally been the focus of HHS.

But Trump's decision to criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing the border illegally -- even if they have children with them -- has resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents and essentially defined as alone, then placed in HHS custody.

The existing sponsorship process does not include any procedures for proactively reuniting children with parents who brought them to the US and may be in government custody, though theoretically once released from custody a parent could apply to sponsor their child's release.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said at a Washington Post event on Wednesday that his agency tries to keep track of parents.

"We keep in touch with the parents," Azar said. "Even under any circumstance we're working to always be in touch with the parents to ensure placement with relatives, and if parents are released, to ensure that they can go to the parents if the parents are appropriate sponsors, if there's no reason why a child would be in jeopardy. We'll keep working to place them with sponsors."

But that is not the process described by those on the ground -- nor articulated in any information about reunification distributed by the agencies to parents or reporters.

It also says, "ICE will work with detained parents to provide regular communication with their children through video teleconferencing, phone and tablets."

According to government figures, thousands of children have been separated from their parents already. From April 19 through the end of May, 1,995 children were separated due to the administration's zero tolerance policy, and 2,342 were separated from May 5 to June 9. The administration has not provided a total number for those overlapping time frames, nor information on how many children are still in government custody or have been returned to their parents.

Advocates working with immigrants say the system is anything but straightforward and functional.

The process to find one's child is "incredibly challenging and what I fear is that it might, in some cases, be impossible," said Wendy Young, president of the advocacy and legal support organization Kids in Need of Defense and an immigration policy expert.

"It's just very difficult to find somebody, especially after the parent's been deported," Young said, saying parents often return to remote, rural areas without stable phone lines. "The other thing to remember is that these people are going back to the same dangerous circumstances they fled ... and they are targeted once they're back."

"That's nuts," the Texas Republican said.

A series of barriers make it very difficult for parents who have been separated from their children under the administration's zero tolerance border policy to reunite with them, according to experts on the system and those who work with immigrants.

Parents are supposed to call hotlines to find their children, but they're difficult to navigate. Many of the families come from remote areas in Central America and are unfamiliar with US systems, and are likely to be distrustful of government. They're housed in facilities with limited access to phones and the ability to receive calls. The government does not provide any legal representation to immigrants in deportation cases automatically, so it is up to the detained immigrants to find lawyers who can help them.

Once the parent is in an adult detention facility, it is unlikely HHS can release their child back to them, as they would not qualify as a sponsor. The DHS has not made clear any policy to move those parents to family detention to be reunited with their kids, aside from its designated removal facility.

"When the family separation policy was implemented, there doesn't seem to have been any planning as to how parents were going to know where their children were, how children were going to know where their parents were, how they were going to be able to communicate and how they would be able to be reunited," said Mark Greenberg, an expert at the Migration Policy Institute who ran the HHS department that cares for undocumented children in the previous administration.

"So at this point there are probably several thousand children in the custody of (HHS) in shelters for unaccompanied children and large numbers of them probably don't know where their parent is and don't know how to communicate with their parent," he continued. "And when parents are in detention, there are clearly significant problems in being able to talk with their children. When parents are being deported, there doesn't seem to be any process in place for figuring what happens next for their children."

Once adults are referred for criminal charges and turned over to federal law enforcement, their children are deemed unaccompanied alien children and given to HHS.

Their cases are then split -- for the immigration courts who will decide if they stay in the US and in terms of which government agency is housing and keeping track of them.

Because adult cases tend to move much more quickly than those for children, parents may get deportation orders before their kids' cases are heard.

Experts who work with the families that have already been separated, like Young, say they are working with people in Central America that they believe have already been deported by this administration without their kids.

The policies do provide for a hotline parents can call, in theory, to locate their children. But advocates who have worked with immigrants trying to use the hotline have described a confusing and ineffective process.

Forms for parents to fill out for HHS obtained by CNN explain to the parents in Spanish that their children are considered unaccompanied minors and that they can offer up information about potential sponsors for their children. But if they don't provide that information, the document says, the government cannot guarantee the child will be placed with someone of the parents' choice.

In ICE custody or in jail, parents can't receive phone calls. Meanwhile, most HHS facilities require people trying to speak with a child to leave their information for a call back, so that HHS can make sure the person is someone authorized to speak to the child, advocates say.

"The bottom line is they didn't think through family reunification when they launched this policy because it wasn't of interest to them. It wasn't a concern," Young said.

"It's deeply concerning that it's not clear if there are any plans for how to provide for reunification of the separated families and children," Greenberg echoed. "As a threshold matter, it will be very difficult to do reunification if parents and children don't know where each other are."</s>U.S. President Donald Trump has rescinded a policy that separated migrant children from their parents and placed them in detention centres, but the outcry over the situation has prompted many Canadians to ask about their own country’s detention practices.

Hanna Gros, a senior fellow with the University of Toronto’s International Human Rights Program, helped author a 2017 study of Canada’s child detainment.

She says Canada does not separate migrant families en masse in detention. However, there are still cases of child detainment, which can cause depression, anxiety and selective mutism.

Gros spoke to CTV News Channel’s Merella Fernandez on Wednesday, and explained that although the numbers of migrant children in detention are declining, she’s believes it is “always a violation of their human rights.”

What are our practices here in this country?

First of all, I think it’s important to highlight that while the U.S. is a natural comparison point, this is not like anything we see in Canada. We don’t detain children en masse and we don’t have family separation en masse.

But that doesn’t mean that there are no human rights violations being committed in the context of Canadian immigration detention.

Children end up in detention in one of two ways. They’re either under formal detention orders, in cases where they’re found to be either a danger to the public, a flight risk or (have) an unclear identity. Otherwise they can end up housed in detention in order to accompany their detained parents.

The international community has been clear on the fact that children should not be in detention. It is always a violation of their human rights.

The other side is separating them from their family, which could be detrimental as well?

Absolutely. And there is a right to family unity in international law as well. So we’re advocating for twinned principals of no child detention and no family separation.

That would mean, of course, that people crossing the border and bringing children would automatically be released and never be detained and that might give people a motive to bring children across the border?

I think that it’s clear that people don’t seek asylum for fun. People are seeking asylum and coming over our borders because they need to. They’re fleeing persecution. This is not a field trip. People need to leave where they’re living.

Do we know how long families are detained?

There’s actually been a great deal of improvement in the lengths of detention with respect to children. We’ve seen reduced numbers both in the number of children detained and the lengths of time they’re detained recently.

Any idea how long that is?

It really depends on the case. On average, it could be a week. It could be two weeks. It depends on the case. It depends on the region as well.

I would say that one to two weeks is not ... a long time? What did it used to be?

The mental health evidence is clear that even brief periods of detention or family separation can have lasting and huge consequences for children’s health and well-being. We’ve seen children deteriorate even after being detained for 48 hours.</s>Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's executive order reversing course on family separations has not changed anything in terms of putting families that have already been separated back together, a government official confirmed Wednesday.

The agency later walked back the statement but said any further plans to reunite families were still in development.

The executive order does not speak to any families that have already been separated -- and existing policies place the onus on parents to find their children in Department of Health and Human Services custody and seek to reunite with them.

On Wednesday afternoon, an HHS spokesman said nothing had changed for the children in its care.

"For the minors currently in the unaccompanied alien children program, the sponsorship process will proceed as usual," HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe told CNN.

Later Wednesday, the agency put out a statement from Brian Marriott, a senior communications official at Administration for Children and Families, the same division of HHS. Though the statement said Wolfe "misspoke" about the executive order, Marriott did not say a clear plan for putting children back with the parents they had been separated from was in place.

"It is still very early and we are awaiting further guidance on the matter," Marriott said. "Our focus is on continuing to provide quality services and care to the minors in HHS/ORR funded facilities and reunifying minors with a relative or appropriate sponsor as we have done since HHS inherited the program. Reunification is always the ultimate goal of those entrusted with the care of UACs, and the administration is working towards that for those UACs currently in HHS custody."

The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its own plans to implement the executive order.

The sponsorship process -- which finds friends, relatives or other suitable volunteers in the US for children in the custody of HHS -- is built mainly for children who come to the US illegally alone, as has traditionally been the focus of HHS.

But Trump's decision to criminally prosecute all adults caught crossing the border illegally -- even if they have children with them -- has resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents and essentially defined as alone, then placed in HHS custody.

The existing sponsorship process does not include any procedures for proactively reuniting children with parents who brought them to the US and may be in government custody, though theoretically once released from custody a parent could apply to sponsor their child's release.

HHS Secretary Alex Azar said at a Washington Post event on Wednesday that his agency tries to keep track of parents.

"We keep in touch with the parents," Azar said. "Even under any circumstance we're working to always be in touch with the parents to ensure placement with relatives, and if parents are released, to ensure that they can go to the parents if the parents are appropriate sponsors, if there's no reason why a child would be in jeopardy. We'll keep working to place them with sponsors."

But that is not the process described by those on the ground -- nor articulated in any information about reunification distributed by the agencies to parents or reporters.

It also says, "ICE will work with detained parents to provide regular communication with their children through video teleconferencing, phone and tablets."

According to government figures, thousands of children have been separated from their parents already. From April 19 through the end of May, 1,995 children were separated due to the administration's zero tolerance policy, and 2,342 were separated from May 5 to June 9. The administration has not provided a total number for those overlapping time frames, nor information on how many children are still in government custody or have been returned to their parents.

Advocates working with immigrants say the system is anything but straightforward and functional.

The process to find one's child is "incredibly challenging and what I fear is that it might, in some cases, be impossible," said Wendy Young, president of the advocacy and legal support organization Kids in Need of Defense and an immigration policy expert.

"It's just very difficult to find somebody, especially after the parent's been deported," Young said, saying parents often return to remote, rural areas without stable phone lines. "The other thing to remember is that these people are going back to the same dangerous circumstances they fled ... and they are targeted once they're back."

"That's nuts," the Texas Republican said.

A series of barriers make it very difficult for parents who have been separated from their children under the administration's zero tolerance border policy to reunite with them, according to experts on the system and those who work with immigrants.

Parents are supposed to call hotlines to find their children, but they're difficult to navigate. Many of the families come from remote areas in Central America and are unfamiliar with US systems, and are likely to be distrustful of government. They're housed in facilities with limited access to phones and the ability to receive calls. The government does not provide any legal representation to immigrants in deportation cases automatically, so it is up to the detained immigrants to find lawyers who can help them.

Once the parent is in an adult detention facility, it is unlikely HHS can release their child back to them, as they would not qualify as a sponsor. The DHS has not made clear any policy to move those parents to family detention to be reunited with their kids, aside from its designated removal facility.

"When the family separation policy was implemented, there doesn't seem to have been any planning as to how parents were going to know where their children were, how children were going to know where their parents were, how they were going to be able to communicate and how they would be able to be reunited," said Mark Greenberg, an expert at the Migration Policy Institute who ran the HHS department that cares for undocumented children in the previous administration.

"So at this point there are probably several thousand children in the custody of (HHS) in shelters for unaccompanied children and large numbers of them probably don't know where their parent is and don't know how to communicate with their parent," he continued. "And when parents are in detention, there are clearly significant problems in being able to talk with their children. When parents are being deported, there doesn't seem to be any process in place for figuring what happens next for their children."

Once adults are referred for criminal charges and turned over to federal law enforcement, their children are deemed unaccompanied alien children and given to HHS.

Their cases are then split -- for the immigration courts who will decide if they stay in the US and in terms of which government agency is housing and keeping track of them.

Because adult cases tend to move much more quickly than those for children, parents may get deportation orders before their kids' cases are heard.

Experts who work with the families that have already been separated, like Young, say they are working with people in Central America that they believe have already been deported by this administration without their kids.

The policies do provide for a hotline parents can call, in theory, to locate their children. But advocates who have worked with immigrants trying to use the hotline have described a confusing and ineffective process.

Forms for parents to fill out for HHS obtained by CNN explain to the parents in Spanish that their children are considered unaccompanied minors and that they can offer up information about potential sponsors for their children. But if they don't provide that information, the document says, the government cannot guarantee the child will be placed with someone of the parents' choice.

In ICE custody or in jail, parents can't receive phone calls. Meanwhile, most HHS facilities require people trying to speak with a child to leave their information for a call back, so that HHS can make sure the person is someone authorized to speak to the child, advocates say.

"The bottom line is they didn't think through family reunification when they launched this policy because it wasn't of interest to them. It wasn't a concern," Young said.

"It's deeply concerning that it's not clear if there are any plans for how to provide for reunification of the separated families and children," Greenberg echoed. "As a threshold matter, it will be very difficult to do reunification if parents and children don't know where each other are."</s>U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order ending his policy of taking migrant children away from their parents at the border.

Trump, while signing the order said: “We want security for our country. The Republicans want security, and insist on security for our country, and we will have that and keep families together.

“It’s very important. I’ll be signing something in a little while that’s going to do that”.

The president’s change of heart came after week of insistence that: “We can’t do it through an executive order” adding only Congress could put an end to his policy.

The order would expand the time that minors could be held in custody, which would allow families to remain together, according to the News Agency of Nigeria, NAN.

The president acknowledged that images of detained children made it difficult to maintain his policy in the face of mounting international criticism.

“Those images affect everybody. But I have to say, you have double standards.

“You have people that want absolute security and safety, and you have people that do look at the children and then you have people like me, and I think most of the people in this room, that want both,” he said.

The president, during a meeting with top Republican lawmakers and other officials, accused Democrats for advocating for open borders warning that the U.S. would be “overrun” by “millions of people.”

“They would like to have open borders where anybody in the world can just flow in, including from the Middle East, from anybody, anywhere, they can just flow into our country.

“Tremendous problems with that. Tremendous crime caused by that.

“We don’t want people coming in from the Middle East through our border using children to get through the line. We don’t want that,” he said.

The president also accused human traffickers of using children as a free pass to enter the country.

“They’re using their children and always they’re using the children as a ticket to getting into the country. We have to remember that.

“There’s a number of the 12,000 children, 2,000 are with the parents, and 10,000 came up with some really horrible people in some cases.

“You have the coyotes, you have the traffickers, the human traffickers, not only drug traffickers, but the human traffickers.

“They use these children as passports to get into the country. So we have to work on that, too.”

He also blamed his predecessors in the office for not fixing the nation’s immigration system.

“This has been going on for 50 years, longer. This has been going on under President Obama, under President (George W.) Bush.

“This has been going on for many, many years. We’ll see if we can solve it. This is not something that happened just now,” he said.

Trump has said in the past that he would back either of two House bills that would also extend the time that immigrant children can be held after they cross the border illegally with their parents.</s>Detention of children is inhumane. The United States must adopt community-based alternatives.

President Trump has signed an Executive Order to end his own administration’s policy of separating migrant and asylum-seeking children from their parents in the face of a massive public outcry and global condemnation. The order calls for children to instead be detained with their families, as part of the administration’s new “zero tolerance” tactic which seeks to prosecute all immigrants who cross the border illegally. To date, more than 2,300 children have been separated from their parents.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) director of programs, Homer Venters, MD, said the executive order is still a cruel measure, and is unacceptable.

“Children do not belong in jails. The new Executive Order simply replaces one cruel action of deliberately breaking apart families with another cruel practice of keeping children locked up with their families. This is profoundly harmful, conflicts with the child’s best interests, and constitutes a violation of child rights,” Venters said.

“It is imperative that the Trump administration swiftly reinstate community-based alternatives to detention, which are humane, effective in terms of both compliance and cost, and which lessen trauma experienced by children and families. It is also of the utmost importance that the thousands of children who have been separated from their families be reunited with them – no matter the cost. So far, there has been no credible indication from the Trump administration that this is planned, or indeed even deemed possible,” Venters added.

Family detention is not a neutral option. Extensive medical research shows that immigration detention is harmful and strongly correlated with negative mental health outcomes. Children who are detained have been shown to exhibit poor physical and psychological health even after a brief stay in detention, which increase the risk of long-term negative effects. Detention has a devastating impact on families, including from restrictions that constrain the ability of parents to respond to their child’s needs in a normal manner.

Kathryn Hampton, PHR’s Asylum Network program officer, said the decision to inflict more harm could not come at a more inopportune time.

“It is a grotesque irony for such an order to be issued on World Refugee Day, given that a substantial number of families being detained are fleeing circumstances of violence and persecution and seeking safe haven in the United States. The so-called ‘zero tolerance’ policy is a cynical effort to chip away at longstanding protections for refugees and asylum seekers,” Hampton said.

In past years, PHR evaluators made regular trips to provide forensic evaluations for children held in family detention facilities. They found that the detention settings were extremely inappropriate and un-therapeutic for the children. Horrific conditions have been reported, including preventable deaths caused by lack of access to adequate medical care.

Psychiatrist, Kirandeep Kaur, DO, who recently carried out evaluations on immigrant children in Dilley, Texas, also called on the Trump administration to treat immigrants humanely.

“As a psychiatrist, I have personally observed conditions in detention centers and they are not acceptable due to a lack of regulation or enforceable standards related to important aspects such as mental health care, medical care or education of young children,” Kaur said.

“The families I spoke with had endured tremendous hardship and most suffered from depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. Being confined to these detention centers is against international human rights laws and only serves to worsen the degree of trauma they have already experienced. Hence this administration must end this practice immediately,” she added.

PHR maintains that the new Executive Order is inconsistent with U.S. obligations under domestic and international law. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1997, through the Flores settlement, ruled that children must be released from custody as soon as possible and that, in the meantime, they must be held in the least restrictive setting possible. The Executive Order on its face violates both of these stipulations, as it will result in indefinite detention of immigrant children. Prolonged or indefinite detention violates the rights to be free from torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) is a New York-based advocacy organization that uses science and medicine to prevent mass atrocities and severe human rights violations. Learn more here.</s>US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced the United States is withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council Tuesday, accusing the body of bias against US ally Israel and a failure to hold human rights abusers accountable.

The move, which the Trump administration has threatened for months, came down one day after the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights slammed the separation of children from their parents at the US-Mexico border as “unconscionable.”

Speaking from the State Department, where she was joined by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Haley defended the move to withdraw from the council, saying US calls for reform were not heeded.

“Human rights abusers continue to serve on, and be elected to, the council,” said Haley, listing US grievances with the body. “The world’s most inhumane regimes continue to escape its scrutiny, and the council continues politicizing scapegoating of countries with positive human rights records in an attempt to distract from the abusers in its ranks.”

“For too long,” Haley said, “the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias.”

Based in Geneva, the Human Rights Council is a body of 47 member states within the United Nations tasked with upholding human rights.

Membership on the council gives countries like the United States a voice in important debates over human rights atrocities, but the council’s critics, including Haley, say abusers use their membership to guarantee their own impunity.

The move was immediately condemned by a dozen charitable groups, who wrote to Pompeo to say they were “deeply disappointed with the Administration’s decision to withdraw the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council, the premier intergovernmental human rights body at the global level.”

“This decision is counterproductive to American national security and foreign policy interests and will make it more difficult to advance human rights priorities and aid victims of abuse around the world,” they added.

US withdrawal from the council follows efforts by Haley and the US delegation to implement reforms, including more stringent membership criteria and the ability to remove members with egregious human rights records.

“When a so-called Human Rights Council cannot bring itself to address the massive abuses in Venezuela and Iran, and it welcomes the Democratic Republic of Congo as a new member, the council ceases to be worthy of its name,” said Haley. “Such a council, in fact, damages the cause of human rights.”

Haley also blasted the council for a “disproportionate focus and unending hostility toward Israel,” citing a series of resolutions highlighting alleged abuses by the Israeli government of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.

Haley said the United States will continue to promote human rights outside of the council and would consider rejoining it in the future if reforms are made.

“We have used America’s voice and vote to defend human rights at the UN every day,” she said, “and we will continue to do so.”</s>The United Nations has issued a damning condemnation of Donald Trump's policy that saw migrant children separated from their parents at the border, suggesting it "may amount to torture".

In a statement issued by the UN's Human Rights Council, experts said the president's recent executive order, ostensibly to halt the controversial separations, failed to resolve the problem and "may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards".

“This executive order does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents. We call on the government of the US to release these children from immigration detention and to reunite them with their families based on the best interests of the child, and the rights of the child to liberty and family unity,” the group of 11 experts said.

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“Detention of children is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture,” the experts said. “Children are being used as a deterrent to irregular migration, which is unacceptable.”

A number of rights groups have questioned Mr Trump's order, issued on Wednesday, mostly for offering few details on how to deal with the more than 2,300 children detained by the US government since the "zero tolerance" policy was enacted by the president's administration in mid-April.

Shape Created with Sketch. People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants Show all 16 left Created with Sketch. right Created with Sketch. Shape Created with Sketch. People strike across America for A Day Without Immigrants 1/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters 2/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters 3/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 4/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 5/16 AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 6/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters 7/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters 8/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 9/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 10/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 11/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 12/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 13/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 14/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 15/16 High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP 16/16 High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP 1/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters 2/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Washington, DC, U.S., February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters 3/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 4/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 5/16 AUSTIN, TX - FEBRUARY 16: Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 6/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Theopolis Waters/Reuters 7/16 Demonstrators march during the "Day Without Immigrants" protest in Chicago, Illinois, February 16, 2017. Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters 8/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants, marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 9/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 10/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 11/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 12/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 13/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 14/16 Protesters march in the streets outside the Texas State Capital on 'A Day Without Immigrants' February 16, 2017 in Austin, Texas. The crowd, which grew to well over a thousand participants marched from the Austin City Hall to the Texas State Capital. Across the country hundreds of restaurants and eateries are closing for the day to protest President Trump's immigration policies and to highlight the contributions of immigrants to U.S. business and life. Drew Anthony Smith/Getty 15/16 High school student Kathia Suarez holds up a sign as she protests with others outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. LM Otero/AP 16/16 High school senior Vicky Sosa holds a sign outside the Grayson County courthouse in downtown Sherman, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 16, 2017. In an action called "A Day Without Immigrants," immigrants across the country are expected to stay home from school, work and close businesses to show how critical they are to the U.S. economy and way of life. LM Otero/AP

That zero tolerance policy means all adults who cross the border illegally are to be prosecuted, even those who make credible fear claims to seek asylum. The government has taken any children of individuals facing prosecution into their care while cases are processed. Mr Trump's executive order sought to end that separation, but did not indicate that adults seeking asylum would not continue to be prosecuted.

Mr Trump said on Thursday that he had ordered authorities to begin the process of re-uniting children with their parents, and the Justice Department asked a federal court for dispensation to hold children longer than the 20 days currently allowed - in order to help reunite families.

However, there are still few concrete details about how any reunifications will happen.

"The separations have been conducted without notice, information, or the opportunity to challenge them," the experts said in the statement. "The parents and children have been unable to communicate with each other. The parents have had no information about the whereabouts of their children, which is a cause of great distress. Moreover, we are deeply concerned at the long-term impact and trauma, including irreparable harm that these forcible separations have on the children".

The UN experts noted that there are exacerbating circumstances for some of the children that makes their removal from family especially damaging. Those concerns include worries about children with disabilities who may need specialised support, and that some of the children may still be breastfeeding.

The zero tolerance policy was announced earlier this year by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the first six weeks saw those thousands of separations.

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Accompanying the disclosure of the number of children who had been separated from their parents came shocking images of the facilities in which those youngsters were being held. In at least one Texas facility, children were pictured in metal cages inside of a temperature controlled facility. Politicians and the media pressed for access to the facilities to monitor the conditions there, and in some cases were denied entrance. The children in those facilities were provided with small sleeping pads, and foil blankets for warmth.

The UN condemnation comes just days after the United States withdrew its membership from the Human Rights Council, saying that the council is against Israel.

"For too long, the Human Rights Council has been a protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias," Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, said Tuesday during a speech at the State Department in Washington. She continued to say that the US had withdrawn from the council to reaffirm America's commitment to human rights, which she said "does not allow us to remain a part of a hypocritical and self-serving organisation that makes a mockery of human rights".

The vast majority of immigrants arriving in the US and facing potential separation are coming from turbulent countries like Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. In those countries, high violent crime rates and difficult economic conditions have forced families to leave, migrating north to the US and elsewhere.</s>The United Nations, however, issued its strongest condemnation of the Trump policy yet, claiming on Friday that separating migrant children from their parents at the border "may amount to torture," cited by multiple sources.

Experts representing the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) noted that Trump's attempt to stop the controversial ongoing US practice does not actually stop the detentions and "may lead to indefinite detention of entire families in violation of international human rights standards," cited by the Washington Post.

UNHRC experts additionally noted that the new White House executive order does not address key points that allow the previous Trump separation edicts to continue.

"This executive order does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents. We call on the government of the US to release these children from immigration detention and to reunite them with their families based on the best interests of the child, and the rights of the child to liberty and family unity," according to the UNHRC statement.

The UNHRC announcement noted that any detention of children is punishment.

 

"Detention of children is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture," according to the UNHRC statement.

"Children are being used as a deterrent to irregular migration, which is unacceptable."

Rights groups around the world have called attention to the likelihood that abuses contained within Trump's original separation decree will not be stopped by the president's Wednesday order, including how to free some 2,300 children — some very small — who were thrown into detention camps through the use of the White House policy after a "zero tolerance" interpretation of US border laws was imposed in mid-April.

The Trump zero tolerance policy has resulted in every adult illegally crossing the border being arrested, detained and prosecuted; while, under the letter of the law, any minor child also apprehended is taken from its parent and placed in a separate holding facility.

Few concrete details are available to indicate precisely how the new Trump order will go about humanizing the process and, more significantly, how it will reunite previously locked-up children with their parents.

"Separations have been conducted without notice, information, or the opportunity to challenge them," the UNHRC stated.

"The parents and children have been unable to communicate with each other. The parents have had no information about the whereabouts of their children, which is a cause of great distress. Moreover, we are deeply concerned at the long-term impact and trauma, including irreparable harm that these forcible separations have on the children," cited by Dailykos.com.

The UNHRC group observed that some of the detained children are young enough to still be breastfeeding.

The White House zero tolerance border arrest policy was announced earlier by Trump's pick for US attorney general, Jeff Sessions who asserted last week that the practice of separating children from their parents was a form of God's will.

Shocking images of detained children in a Texas facility revealed metal cages inside a windowless temperature-controlled former Walmart warehouse, while lawmakers and reporters seeking additional information on the practice were denied entry.

The damning UNHRC condemnation was released just days after the US withdrew membership in the global human-rights organization, according to The Independent.
The United Nations Human Rights Council issues a condemnation of the separation of migrant children from their parents, saying it "may amount to torture", and the recent executive order "does not address the situation of those children who have already been pulled away from their parents."