Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas said the administration of former President Barack Obama tried to keep "quiet" about the number of unaccompanied minors who were crossing the southern U.S. border with Mexico.
"There were large numbers of people coming in," Cuellar said, the Washington Examiner reported Saturday. "The Obama administration was trying to keep this quiet."
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Friday that nearly 2,000 minors were separated from their parents at the border in a six-week period from April 19 to May 31 of this year, CBS News reported.
During 2014, under the administration of former President Barack Obama, 70,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended at the southern U.S. border, representing a 77 percent jump from the previous year, The Washington Post reported.
Minors who are split from their families are housed by the Department of Health and Human Services. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday defended the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy that began April 6, which refers illegal immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. for prosecution.
"We are not sending children to jail with their parents," Sessions said. "Noncitizens who cross our borders unlawfully, between our ports of entry, with children are not an exception. They are the ones who broke the law. They are the ones who endangered their own children on their trek. The United States, on the other hand, goes to extraordinary lengths to protect them while the parents go through a short detention period."
Cuellar noted not all children crossing the border are being separated "because some of them are coming in alone." He also said some adults accompanying children across the border were not blood relatives, but were attempting to take advantage of loopholes in U.S. immigration law.