Migrant Families Who Enter at Legal Ports Are Rarely Separated, Customs Officials Say

WASHINGTON — Facing a barrage of criticism over their agency’s role in carrying out the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy at the border, officials at Customs and Border Protection went on the offensive Monday to deny claims that officers at official ports of entry had separated families and turned away migrants seeking asylum in the United States.

Customs and Border Protection is the agency most directly responsible for apprehending immigrants trying to cross the border illegally. But officials said that just one part of the agency, the Border Patrol, was responsible for carrying out the administration’s policy of referring those immigrants to the Justice Department for prosecution, which resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents.

From May 5, when the zero-tolerance policy began, through June 20, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the separation of families, the Border Patrol referred 2,262 adults traveling with children to the Justice Department for prosecution, according to an official familiar with the referrals.

But officials with the Office of Field Operations, another division within Customs and Border Protection, said that the zero-tolerance policy did not apply at ports of entry because seeking asylum was legal and that its officers had separated families at such points only in a small number of cases.

Todd C. Owen, the assistant commissioner for the Office of Field Operations, said that between early May, when the zero-tolerance policy began, and July 2, a few weeks after the practice ended, there were just seven cases of children being separated out of 5,298 families who appeared at ports of entry. There are 48 ports of entry along the southwest border.

He said in all seven cases, the children were separated because an adult traveling with them had a criminal record. Owen said the department had always separated children from their parents when there was a danger to the children.

In four of the separation cases, the families tried to bypass customs officers by running through the gates at ports of entry, he said. While it is legal to seek asylum at the ports, it is illegal to try to cross by bypassing customs officers.

In the three other cases, an adult traveling with the children had a criminal record that included offenses such as drug dealing, aggravated assault or being previously deported, Owen said in a call with reporters.

He also rebuffed claims that customs officers had denied migrants the ability to make asylum claims or that the agency had prevented immigrants from entering the United States by putting officers on bridges at the ports of entry.

Owen said the officers stopped migrants from entering because of a capacity issue.

“Ports were not designed for the large-scale detention for the number of migrants we’re seeing today,” he said. He added that customs officers had not denied asylum to migrants because they did not have the authority to hear such cases.

“CBP officers at the ports of entry make no determination,” he said. Those making asylum claims are turned over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where they are detained and given appointments with asylum officers from Citizenship and Immigration Services, he added.

The briefing by top officials at Customs and Border Protection came after weeks of unrelenting criticism of the agency by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and news accounts both from migrants who said they had been discouraged from entering the country by customs officers and from some families who said they were separated from their children even though they came to official ports of entry to enter the country legally.

Officials from the Department of Homeland Security have long encouraged migrants to cross at the ports, where they can legally seek entry into the country.

Yet pictures of customs officers standing on bridges on the border in El Paso, Texas, keeping migrants on the Mexican side of the border have been widely circulated. Some migrants set up makeshift camps on the bridges while they waited to make an asylum claim.

Chris Rickerd, a lawyer with the ACLU, said officials at Customs and Border Protection had discouraged migrants from entering the country by making them wait for days.

“I’ve seen this in person,” he said. “They are lying if they say this isn’t happening. They literally have checkpoints in the middle of bridges to keep people on the Mexican side.”

Also on Monday, several immigration groups met with Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of homeland security, to discuss the administration’s separation of families at the border and migrants’ rights to seek asylum. But several attendees said they left the meeting disappointed after Nielsen declined to discuss the separation crisis because of continuing litigation.

“Today we attempted to engage the secretary to take seriously the harm this administration has caused thousands of families and were met with the same misinformation it has expressed since it first created this crisis,” said Mary Meg McCarthy, the executive director of the National Immigrant Justice Center, who attended the meeting.

Tyler Q. Houlton, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said Nielsen was sincere in meeting with the groups to discuss immigration issues.

“While a few of the invited participants took the opportunity to share helpful ideas, several attendees showed no interest in discussing productive solutions,” Houlton said in a statement. “Instead, they used the meeting as a platform to attack the administration’s efforts to adhere to the rule of law.”

Several immigration and civil rights groups have sued Customs and Border Protection, accusing the agency of unlawfully turning away migrants claiming asylum.

The American Immigration Council, along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a lawsuit that the agency’s officers had used a variety of tactics — including misrepresentation, threats and intimidation, physical force and coercion — to deny legitimate asylum-seekers the opportunity to pursue their claims. The case, which was filed last year before the zero-tolerance policy began, is pending.