are you creditionsidering th did ternt. reporter: nielsen unable to give a number of how many children had been separated. you left kids be separated without track being them. do you know how outrage dwlaus is? nielsen confirming that some parents have been deported without their children but insisting. there is no parent who has been deported, to my knowledge, without multiple opportunities to take their children with them. reporter: a recent court filing by the trump administration identified 471 parents who were removed from the u.s. without their children. some without being given the opportunity to elect or waive reunification. democrats grilling her about the conditions at the border. does it different from the kath cages you put your dogs in when you let them stay outside? is it different? yes. in what sense? it s larger.
no accounting? why they don t know? it was pulling teeth to get the 3,000 children accounted for. putting aside the attorneys who may or may not have known everything from the agency, the agency husband to know. they are taking a position in court, these families were separated and the children released before the court order so be it. but the point is that there are children who may not be with their parents. the government s artificial legal arguments arguing it is too much to handle they do not want to go through the files. they should have had a tracking system. why are they now saying it is too much burden. they created the burden by taking the children away and not having a tracking system. now they are saying it is too much burden. the 471 parents, the
we have heard it in the past. now with the court filing the administration is providing the updated count here. we know it was 471 parents who left this country without their children. in addition to that, the court filing actually revealing new numbers as well. as of monday 2,700 kids have been discharged from the government s care. jim and poppy, that number is up six since mid february. the government showing it is making some progress with the kids leaving the government s care here. guys? . the parents had the option. thanks for helping clear that up. now with james clapper, thank you very much for joining us. thank you for having me. on this issue. administration officials prior to nielsen s testimony yesterday
we have all of the numbers. she doesn t have all of the numbers before her. she doesn t know off hand. remember, this all started back in april of 2018 and the summer of 2018 a federal judge ordered that the administration reunite all of these children with their families. yet in march of 2019, the secretary of homeland security cannot say, won t say how many children we are talking about right now. everyone more or less matters. that goes without saying because every single one is a child. but we do have one number this morning, court documents show that 471 parents were deported from the u.s. without their children. were they all given the option to bring their children with them? that seems to be up for debate. here is what the homeland security secretary says about that. there is no parent who has
some of them made the agonizing decision to leave their child in the u.s. when we told them we couldn t necessarily get them back. the reason they did it is the kind of decision every immigrant family has to make at some point is it was too dangerous to bring the child back. the parents said to me, if i m killed, i m killed. i cannot bring my child back here. that s the kind of agonizing decision our government forced on these families. this is unbelievable and requires a lot more answers now. on the 471, were they given the option as the secretary says. and how many children are actually still separated and have been separated from their families? when this started in april, we still have no real accounting. the number keeps going up. we thought we were at 2,800. we may be looking at another couple thousand. thank you very much. we ll be right back.