The girls were released by the government to their father in Virginia, with whom they were not close. I don’t go out at all.”She said the girls were struggling without her, especially her youngest, who is going through puberty. They say they miss me, that they want us to be back together again,” she said, adding, “Girls need their mother.”The efforts to reunify separated families have been marred by poor record-keeping since they began in the summer of 2018. And because the computer system used by border authorities for processing incoming migrants had not been updated to accommodate family separations, the agents often inadvertently deleted identification numbers that could have been used to keep track when parents and children were sent to different places. The initial court order to reunite separated families led to a monthslong effort by workers at multiple federal agencies who worked through long nights and weekends to track down the parents of separated children, which often required culling through records by hand for clues as to who their parents were.

Source: New York Times October 21, 2020 17:18 UTC