The government's top watchdog announced Wednesday it would audit the Trump administration’s process for tracking illegal immigrant families that were separated at the southern border.
The action by the Government Accountability Office came in response to a request from Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., after President Donald Trump issued an order ending the separations — without any plan for monitoring it.
In a letter to Pallone, the GAO said it would review the "systems or processes" by which the Office of Refugee Resettlement, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security keep track of the separated adults and kids.
More than 2,000 children were separated from their parents between April and May under the Trump administration's controversial zero tolerance immigration policy. The backlash, however, pressured Trump to issue an executive order reversing the family separations.
“While I hope that President Trump’s June 20 Executive Order will put an end to this immoral practice, that Order is entirely prospective, and does not speak to how the Administration will reunite the 2,342 children already separated from their families," Pallone wrote to the GAO last week.
“To bring accountability and ensure these children are properly accounted for and ultimately reunited with their families, Congress needs an immediate assessment of the systems or processes by which ORR and DHS are tracking each minor in their care, as well as their respective parents or guardians from whom they were separated," he added.
Meanwhile, the HHS inspector general on Thursday announced its own investigation into the conditions at child detention facilities around the country, The Hill reported.
"Specifically, this review will focus on a variety of safety- and health-related issues such as employee background screening, employees' clinical skills and training, identification and response to incidents of harm, and facility security," the OIG said, according to The Hill.
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