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The Trump administration most likely separated thousands more children from their parents at the Southern border than was previously believed, according to a report by government inspectors released on Thursday. The federal government has reported that nearly 3,000 children were forcibly separated from their parents under last year’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, under which nearly all adults entering the country illegally were prosecuted, and any children accompanying them were put into shelters or foster care. (Jordan, 1/17)

Ann Maxwell, assistant inspector general for evaluations, said the number of children removed from their parents was certainly larger than the 2,737 listed by the government in court documents. Those documents chronicled separations that took place as parents were criminally prosecuted for illegally entering the country under President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. "It's certainly more," Maxwell said. "But precisely how much more is unknown." Maxwell said investigators didn't have specific numbers, but that Health and Human Services staff had estimated the tally to be in the thousands. (Long and Alonso-Zaldivar, 1/17)

The administration of President Donald Trump implemented a 'zero tolerance' policy to criminally prosecute and jail all illegal border crossers even those traveling with their children, leading to a wave of separations last year. The policy sparked outrage when it became public, and the backlash led Trump to sign an executive order reversing course on June 20, 2018. But the auditor said in a report that prior to the officially announced 'zero tolerance' policy, the government began ramping up separations in 2017 for other reasons related to a child's safety and well-being, including separating parents with criminal records or lack of proper documents. (Rosenberg, 1/17)

Although previous administrations also separated minors at the border in some instances — usually when they suspected the child was smuggled, or if the parent appeared unfit — the report said the practice appears far more common under Trump and began nearly a year before administration officials publicly acknowledged it. (Goldstein, 1/17)

The first separations began in 2017 and were seen as a trial balloon for the “zero-tolerance” policy announced by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in May 2018, an HHS official not involved in conducting the audit told POLITICO. A federal investigator declined to say whether senior Trump administration officials were told about those early separations, but suggested that could be addressed in the upcoming reports. "We did not, in this report, address who knew what, when," said Assistant Inspector General Ann Maxwell on the press call. The inspector general report said some family separations continued, even after President Donald Trump in June 2018 ended the policy amid uproar and a federal court ordered his administration to reunify the families. The June 2018 court order called on the administration to reunify about 2,500 separated children in government custody. Most of those families were reunited within 30 days. (Diamond, 1/17)

The audit noted that DHS sometimes separates children from parents for the child's safety or well-being, such as when parents are found to pose a danger or can't care for the child because of illness or injury. These children are held in government custody along with migrant children who arrive without parents. (Phillip, 1/17)

HHS has since reunited or otherwise released most of those children, but there are thousands more who were separated before that point. The total number is unknown, and officials also don’t know how how many of those children have been reunited. The efforts to reunite separated children were impeded by the department's lack of a centralized database to track children. (Weixel, 1/17)