Media outlets unite to track down migrant children separated from parents under Trump policy

Six news organizations are partnering together to track down information about the migrant children being held in detention centers and shelters across the country after being separated from their families upon crossing the U.S.–Mexico border.

BuzzFeed News announced this week that it was uniting with ProPublica, The Intercept, Univision News, Animal Politico and Plaza Publica to gather research about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy, which seeks to prosecute anyone crossing into the U.S. illegally via the southern border.

“Amid a heated national debate about the policy, actual information about the whereabouts and welfare of separated children is hard to come by,” BuzzFeed said in a statement Wednesday.{mosads}

The media outlets said they hope to crowdsource information because the federal government is not providing any to state agencies.

Thousands of protesters gathered across the country on Saturday for “Families Belong Together” marches protesting the Trump administration’s immigration policies.

President Trump has faced severe backlash in recent weeks for his administration’s zero tolerance immigration policy, which led to more than 2,000 migrant children being separated from their parents from April to May.

Images of children being detained behind cages and sounds of kids crying for their parents sparked national outrage, eventually forcing Trump to sign an executive order ending the practice of family separations.

Thousands of families have yet to be reunited.

U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw ordered the administration on Tuesday to immediately move to reunify immigrant families. 

Sabraw criticized the practice of separating families without “any effective system or procedure” for tracking where the children were being sent.