GOP senator: Trump admin’s handling of migrant family reunification ‘boggles my mind’

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday decried a “lack of information” from the Trump administration on how it plans to reunite migrant families that had been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. 

“If they got a process, they’re not revealing the process to me,” Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, told CNN. “These are human beings.”

“I’m just not getting the answers I would have thought they should have on the tips of their fingers,” he continued. “It boggles my mind. I just would assume that the connection in all these things are tracked — and that the reunification would have been a relatively simple matter.”

{mosads}Johnson’s comments came as the Trump administration neared a court-mandated deadline to reunite migrant children under the age of 5 with their parents. A federal judge in San Diego ordered the government to move quickly to reunite the families, giving officials 14 days to reunite the youngest children and 30 days for older children. 

Thousands of migrant children have been separated from their families in recent months as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which prioritizes prosecutions of people who cross into the U.S. illegally through Mexico.

The family separations have sparked public outrage in the U.S. and around the world. Immigrants’ rights advocates gathered in cities across the country late last month to protest the policy and to call for the swift reunification of migrant families.

Johnson acknowledged in his interview with CNN that there are challenges in the reunification process. But he said that lawmakers have not been given adequate information on the administration’s plans. 

“I have not been satisfied with the information that we’ve gotten,” he said.