DHS Confirms Parents, Kids May Be Separated at Border

The Homeland Security Department is considering separating children from parents caught crossing the Mexican border illegally, Secretary John Kelly said Monday. Kelly said such a move would be part of a broader effort to discourage families from making the dangerous trek across Mexico to the US border, the AP reports. He confirmed that he's considering the action during an interview with CNN Monday. The plan had previously been reported by several news outlets. "I would do almost anything to deter the people from Central America getting on this very, very dangerous network ... going through Mexico," Kelly said during his television interview. Kelly said if families are separated at the border, the children will be "well-cared for" by government officials.

Tens of thousands of parents and children fleeing violence and poverty, mostly from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, have been caught crossing the border illegally in recent years. Generally, the families are detained for a few days or weeks before being released into the United States to wait for an immigration judge to decide their fate. Homeland Security officials have been trying to curb the flow of families since 2014 when a flood of both children and families overwhelmed immigration officials. The Obama administration opened multiple detention centers that year, in part to deter others from crossing, to house families while immigration judges and asylum officers heard their cases But a federal judge in California later ruled that detaining children violated a long-standing agreement that bars the government from detaining children in a jail-like setting. (More immigration stories.)