And which democrat cared back then?
The number of undocumented children being held without their parents in U.S. government custody has seen a 21 percent increase in the past month after the Trump administration announced its “zero tolerance” crackdown on families caught crossing the border illegally, it has emerged.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said on Tuesday that it had as many as 10,773 undocumented children in its custody—a significant jump from the 8,886 that were in the agency’s custody on April 29, the Washington Post reported.
While the number has seen a surge over the past month, it does not represent the highest number of undocumented children to be held in HHS custody.
In fiscal year 2013, the HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had as many as 25,000 unaccompanied children in its care across 80 shelters, according to a July 2014 article in Mother Jones.
The number represented a huge jump from 2011, when the ORR had just 53 shelters housing 6,560 kids.
The surge in the number of children being taken into custody was so unexpected that federal immigration authorities temporarily placed children in emergency dormitories at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Mother Jones reported.