Some migrant parents who have been reunited with their young children say the children no longer recognize them, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The parents told the newspaper that after waiting months to see their children again, the kids cried and didn’t recognize them.
{mosads}“He didn’t recognize me,” one parent, Mirce Alba Lopez, told the Times of her 3-year-old son. “My joy turned temporarily to sadness.”
The parents also said the children believed that the other children they were detained with were their siblings.
The families who spoke with the Times were reunited Tuesday after a court ordered the Trump administration to reunify the families separated at the border under a since-ended administration policy.
Officials had until Tuesday to reunite immigrant children under the age of 5 with their families. The administration earlier this week said it would not meet this deadline and in a court filing Tuesday revealed that only 38 out of the 102 identified children would be reunited on time.
The administration on Tuesday essentially returned to the “catch and release” policy for people caught illegally crossing the border, releasing migrant families wearing ankle monitors into the U.S. after courts prevented officials from holding the families detained at the border.
A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official also said Tuesday that the administration had paused referring adults caught illegally crossing the border with children for prosecution and had also equipped them with ankle bracelets before releasing them.
Trump has railed against catch and release. His administration imposed a “zero tolerance” policy at the border earlier this year, mandating that all immigrants caught illegally crossing the border face prosecution.
That led to the separations of families and a political controversy that eventually forced Trump to issue an executive order ending the family separations.