DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen speaks to Fox Nes at the US-Mexico border.
Credit: via screengrab

As part of a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Administration officials have admitted that it would take too much effort to reunite families the government separated before it implemented its zero-tolerance policy towards asylum seekers and others that the government enacted last April.

The administration also does not refute a report from the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services released in January that claims “thousands” more families had been separated that had previously been mentioned, and that family separations were ongoing prior to the formal introduction of the policies that have led to 2,800 children being separated from their families from April to June of 2018.

HHS has also said that they simply do not know how many children have been separated from their parents — and that because no one implemented any form of record keeping on these separations, it would be an undue “burden” […]