A pediatrician tasked by the federal court in Los Angeles to monitor the conditions of migrant children in U.S. government custody revealed in a recent court filing that some children were temporarily separated from their parents while in Border Patrol custody this summer due to overcrowding.
Dr. Paul Wise, a pediatrician associated with Stanford University, interviewed families in the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas this summer and found children as young as 8 were separated from their parents while being held in the temporary custody of Customs and Border Protection, according to the document filed Friday in the Central District of California.
“Interviews with parents and children found that there were minimal or no opportunities for phone contact or direct interaction between parent and child. The separation of families and the lack of interaction while in custody do significant, and potentially lasting, harm to children, particularly younger children,” Wise said in the court filing.
Wise also said some migrants reported children younger than 8 were separated. He noted that in the past some teenage males who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border with their mothers were separated from family pods that typically held younger children. But in the cases he documented this summer, the children being separated were much younger, according to the filing.
Get top local stories in San Diego delivered to you every morning. Sign up for NBC San Diego's News Headlines newsletter.
A Customs and Border Protection official told NBC News that the circumstances in which families are separated in CBP custody are rare and separation usually happens with a father is traveling alone with his children. If CBP personnel are not able to find a pod for that individual family due to overcrowding, they make an assessment based on the age of the children and sometimes put the children in a pod with other children of their age and gender, the official said.
