his current tenure at hhs is the second tour of duty at the department. he served as hhs' general counsel from 2001-2005 and then as deputy secretary, the department's number two official, and chief operating officer. during his time as deputy secretary, he played key roles in international affairs, global health diplomacy, implementation of new medicare prescription drug programs, public health emergency preparedness and response efforts and food and drug regulation. full plate. he also led the department through several successful management and operational transformations. he joined the private sector in 2007, moving to indiana with his wife and children, and it is my pleasure to welcome here today the secretary of health and my friend. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, thank you. well, thank you, everybody. it's great to be here with so many, so many great friends. not just kay, but looking around, i'm seeing so many friendly faces in the audience already. hope it remains friendly during q&a, kay, we'll see. thank you for that very kind introduction

what else are you all doing on that issue at hhs? azar: so we look at our programs, even like in medicaid, so, one of the things i mentioned in my remarks is we have been very supportive with these able bodied adults. it's a very different kind of population than we're used to in medicaid program. medicaid has been historically for children and elderly, the disabled. now it's an income program for individuals who are able-bodied up to a certain income level. there's no reason they necessarily couldn't be working. and so we have been supportive of state efforts to impose community engagement or work requirements. we've tried to be sensible. if an individual is single and have young children, -- and has young children, exemptions. we're trying to be very sensible, but i've told the team as we work on this, it should be common sense that anything a state does here, people ought to look at it, oh, yeah, it's not some unreasonable crazy thing. you talk about this, the programs we've approved, you can volunteer just 20 hours of volunteer w

i have served in hhs under three presidents. i am assigned to the office of the assistant secretary for preparedness and response. i previously served as the deputy director of refugees resettlement for unaccompanied alien children's program as a senior career official. i believe there is a need for clarity on the services that hhs abides every day to unaccompanied children and its care. the quality of care provided by hhs for children is excellent. to agency takes any reports the contrary seriously and investigates appropriately. all children in our over 100 facilities receive medical, dental, and mental health care. most facilities are monitored at both state and federal levels, and the high standard of care for kids is the same for american children in licensed residential care settings across the country. we provide the children ramming that includes education, a creation of outdoor sports, arts and crafts and physical activity . children in our facilities receive three meals a day as well as snacks. at all times, it hhs kno

mccance-katz assistance hhs secretary for substance abuse and mental health services to testify about the work the substance abuse and what they are doing to address our country's mental health needs. mental health title of 21st century cures act was based upon helping families of a mental health crisis reform act of 2016 passed the house by a vote for hundred 22/two prior to its inclusion in the 2t century cures act bill this legislative effort represents the most significant reforms for the mental health system in more than a decade. the first provision to strengthen the leadership with the accountability of samsa to establish the position that dr. mccance-katz now holds one of her duties as assistant hhs secretary for substance abuse and mental health services to develop a strategic plan by the end of the fiscal year. twenty-first century cureslo act also strengthens existing programs the community mental health block plants services and substance abuse treatment lot granting given that each state and community is different this law provides flexibility to address their unique ment

right now, hhs just gets the bill, and we pay it. this system may actually be driving doctors to prescribe more expensive drugs, while potentially tempting drug companies to develop drugs that fit into part b rather than d. we are going to look at ways to merge part b drugs into part d, and leverage existing private sector options within part b. we need a more competitive pharmaceutical marketplace. thanks to the reforms congress passed in the 1980s, america has the strongest generic drug market in the world. there are many ways manufacturers still unfounded block competition. since the role of the president blueprint, fdf publicist the names of companies who may be using safety programs to block competition and issued new guidance to help lessen the effects of these action if on generic approvals. since a blueprint rollout, cms reminded part d plan it is unacceptable to have gag clauses barring pharmacies from working with patients to lower come to identify lower-cost options. more broadly we were to ensure patients patient so how m

mccance-katz assistant hhs secretary for substance abuse and mental health services. we appreciate you being here with us today and you are recognized for five minutes for your opening mac chairman and ranking member and members of the house energy subcommittee on helsinki for inviting me to justify this hearing in decembe december 20, 1621 century cures act was signed into law and i want to thank you for your vision and leadership on addressing the needs of americans living with mental health disorders with the departments of hhs have been actively implementing this loss was passed was the first assistant secretary the physician created by 21st century cures act i take three see my duties outlined including leadership with evidence-based program and coordination across government part of strengthening leadership and accountability includes a strong clinical perspective of the agency to codify the role of the chief medical officer and we are taking further to establish the beginning of the office to include two additional psychiatrist is clinical psychologist and a nu

if the hhs secretary didn't say that, then the hhs secretary should be fired.as either gross incompetence, or, and i'm afraid this is the case, it was a purposeful manipulation that would make mack i don't see develop ee blush. the president said i want the wall at the border. when he didn't get the wall, he said fine, i will set up a gauntlet, put out a message to people if you come into this country, you're going to be subjected to all sorts of inhumane treatment. we're going to separate you from your children, we're going to send the children all over the country. we won't even be in a position to relocate them. this position that they have 700 children that they now can't reunify either because they deported the parents without reunifying the child first or the federal government made a decision that the parents are not good custodians of their children. on what basis did you take children from their parents? and that's why new york has a lawsuit. you can't just take the child from a parent and declare the parent is not a good custodian. they have due proce

why isn't he calling out hhs saying get your act together. get this done. >> my ununderstanding is that t president is making sure they know how serious it is and they have to move on it quick. something ana said and i agree with, we're talking about people here. there's a rush to go and talk about this and the numbers. these are human beings. and this is why i think the security side of this and making sure we're getting the right kids with the right parents and we're not handing kids over to drug traffickers or human traffickers or mules or anything like this is very important because it could be one child, it could be ten, it could be 50. we don't know how many could possibly be mismatched or sent to the wrong people. again, some of these kids put through perilous situations in their journey north from central america. we don't mow who they might be sent back for. >> indeed. perilous journeys and then separated when they got over here. >> look, i don't think the president cares. okay. he has shown very little everyone think towards any of

hhs sends the information back to the parents.they're making arrangements to communicate by phones. >> so the stories that are happening are not true? so -- >> you can pick a case where maybe somebody made a mistake in processing. the overall processes are worked. the bottom line is, the parents are separated because they chose to violate the laws of the country, commit a crime and enter illegally. if they enter through the port of entry, they still have the same legal protections, they still can climb asylum and not be separated. they chose. i know if i cross between the ports, it's a crime. i'm going to do it anyways. so the first blame is with the parents. the second is with the florist settlement agreement. the third is with congress. i was on the hill when we asked congress for a fix. fix this agreement. raise the standards of asylum that people are taking advantage of. congress want to vilify ice. we gave them the fix months ago. >> we know what the problem is with congress. >> they're putting their political interests befor

the oig recommended that hhs recoup these funds.as hhs supplied you a timeframe to recoup the $341,000 that were wasted? >> i don't believe we have a timeframe yet with regard to that. last weekend as part of our process we will be following up with the department on how they are implementing those recommendations and following up with them over the next few months on how to make those recommendations and at some point we will get a timeframe. >> i be interested in knowing when you have one. thanks for your time and i yielded back. >> i'd like to recognize miss wall or ski for five minutes. >> mister bagdoyan, it's my understanding that to implement a strategy in line with gao's framework must be first conducted. can you talk about that? >> sure. an assessment is basically a bottoms up held out from looking at all the in this case medicare's various parts and identifying risks that are known and perhaps speculating on the ones that are emerging. fraud risk is not static, it's a very dynamic from region to region, that he to city. it

increase the risk that hhs will reunify a child with a parent who will abuse them. it is clear from mr. meekins declaration that he does not understand the court's orders, or is acting in defiance of them. to be clear, determinations of parentage, fitness and danger must be made before any class members are reunited with their children. class members meaning parents. the judge goes on to say there is no reason why one of these goals must be sacrificed for the other given the vast amount of resources available to the federal government. now, hhs coming back after the scolding from the judge saying "defendants have been striving to comply with the court's orders in good faith, and the plan indeed requires hhs to make a determination of parentage based on the information available to it before reunifying families within the deadlines." hhs even sending out a flowchart showing what they will be doing, ana, to make sure that children are safe, but they are following the process, they say, that was issued and ordered by that judge. >> of course, you and all of us will sta

the wording that the hhs secretary is using certainly is very important. he said under 3,000 children, so that is not a real number yet. the last data point of course we had was that last tuesday, he said there were 2,047 children who had been separated from their parents still in custody. so that begs the question, has the number gone up at all? considering there's two different data points here. on that call, he kind of tried to explain it, he said because of that court order that they had to go back years before and really scrub thousands and thousands of cases before even the zero tolerance policy was started back in may, so that potentially could have added to the number. so it's very clear, brooke, that they're not fully telling us the number. it could be as much as 3,000 kids, but falls start of giving us an exact number to give us a full accounts of what exactly is going on. >> just the news today about the dna testing, that they're testing to identify basically which kid belongs to which parent. what's the explanation behind that? >> reporter: thi

today hhs gave us some new information.y said currently there are now under 3,000 children in total who are still in custody who may have been separated from their parents. and that includes 100 children under the age of five. both those are new numbers that we received for the first time today. but what's notable here is this is not ha precise tally. hhs today would not give us an exact figures. when reporters tried to pin them dounl, here down, here's hhs secretary on that call earlier today. >> i want to be clear, it is under 3,000. i want to give you an outer bound, under 3,000, and that is the maximum set. it will not be 3,000. it will not be close to 3,000. it will be under 3,000. >> now the reason these numbers are important is the last figure that we had was last tuesday. that's 9 days ago. then said 2,047 still in custody. so this newest mate is much higher. hhs secretary today says that is because the court ordered required officials to go back further in time to comb through thousands of cases to finds any separa

he says hhs only said he didn't follow protocol.re not making any -- they're not making any friends here, left or right. >> no, they're not making any friends. i think one of the things that's interesting is hhs secretary azar did a conference call yesterday. that's when this 3,000 number came out when everyone was like, wait a second, that wasn't what we thought the number was. what's really interesting is the guy in charge of the office of refugee resettlement, which is the one who is in charge of these kids who have been separated from parents or kids who come over by themselves, scott lloyd, who has been in the news before but not that much, no one is really asking like how is he doing this? now, i realize hhs is overall, but he is the guy who is in charge of figuring out what to do with these kids. congress has not called to talk to him. he is -- basically he has shown up on some conference calls but won't take questions. i finding it fascinating that that guy hasn't actually had a conversation. >> alfonso, you worked in the ad

that granted a 17-year-old immigrant in the custody of the department of health and human services hhs, the right to get an abortion. cavanaugh argued in his dissent that holding the young woman in custody refusing to release her for a medical appointment for her procedure until hhs was able to find her a sponsor who could serve as a foster parent, was not undue burden under the supreme court's legal test. he did not consider holding someone in government custody to be an undue burden. this is a view of someone who will not follow the law as currently set forth by the supreme court. if confronted the challenges to r roe. and let us remember that it's the supreme court that sets precedent and that could happen if judge kavanaugh is on that court and really the dissent in this case is a view of someone chosen for a reason, ready to fulfill donald trump's campaign promise to see roe vs wade overturned this fight matters. who sits on our courts matters and how we exercise our constitutional duty to examine a nom fee for the highest court in our land matters. justice will finance conservati

at times when we've reached out to hhs, they have ignored our questions. at other times they've simply acknowledged receipt of the questions, but not given an answer. sometimes they have given answers, but it's usually been incomplete or really not answering the direct questions that we've had, and we've been pushing on a daily basis getting very basic answers or trying to get very basic questions answered. one good example that of is as you set up very nicely in the introduction there is about something as simple as a head count, trying to get our arms around how many kids were separated from their families and who have not been reunified. at first, they broke down that number. they said these are the number of kids who were separated from their families. these were the numbers of kids who showed up unaccompanied without an adult. then they went back and did a lump sum, putting all of those kids together. that essentially gave us even less information than we had before. so certainly a lot more questions here tonight. and i think this claim by secretary a

that number considerably higher than the roughly 2,000 previously reported by hhs. secretary alex azar revealing the new numbers today during a call with reporters, describing the situation as, quote, unprecedented, and promising the resulting reunifications will be as "compassionate a process as it possibly can be." the administration grappling with the court-mandated deadline requiring families to be reunited by july 26th. but tonight, there are questions about how exactly it will be done. meantime, president trump steadfast with his stance on combating illegal border crossings. in a series of tweets this morning, writing, "when people with or without children enter our country, they must be told to leave. tell the people out, and they must leave, just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn." and tonight, there are 11 unaccompanied migrant children being cared for at this church facility here in ft. worth, texas. the hhs secretary says they will use dna screening to determine family relationships and reunite all of those separated families. tom? >>

the last number that hhs gave was 2,047. now they say possibly 3,000 or around 3,000. >> yes, it's an approximate number. it could be more than that. we simply do not know. that was a ballpark figure. you think there would be a precise head count here. these are people we're talking about, after all. >> and some of them kids. apparently 100 children under the age of 5. the other big step looming for this white house, the agenda for president trump's summit with president vladimir putin. tell us what you're hearing there. >> this certainly is going to be something that's on the president's schedule coming up. we heard from a couple senior administration officials just a short time ago this morning on some of the agenda items for that meeting that's going to be in helsinki a week from monday, on the 17th of this month. they are going to be talking about arms control. they are going to be talking about syria. the question always, jim, as you well know s russian meddling going to be a central part of the conversation of the dial

it is coming from hhs. it is now saying that the number is nearly 3,000.this another indication they don't know how many children still need to be reunified? last week the number was just over 2,000. then you have hhs secretary saying no, no, the number only includes children separated under the zero-tolerance policy, threw out a number of about 1,000. what do we know? >> what do we know. what do they know. they ought to be on ton of this, they ought to have a specific number, they should have a plan that is quicker and better. this is guis gutwrenching of co. for anybody who has kids, the thought of being separatesed from your small child for that long is just hard to fathom and hard to stomach. and so for many americans, whether democrat or republican, this is a very bad story and it needs to be fixed right away and government needs to be on top of it. hhs needs to get their story right. >> this is why a lot of people, thousands and thousand of americans last weekend across this country, 750 plus demonstrations, it was all about this issue. okay. guys, g

this call today with hhs is clearly their attempt to try to give more information.ought us very little clarity to the questions we've been asking on a daily basis quite some time now and far short of the full accounting going on with these kids, how many are still separated, how many have been reunified. the numbers they were able to give today are still incomplete. the new numbers we learned today according to hhs, there are currently under 3,000 children in total still in custody, who have been separated from their parents. that includes 100 children under the age of 5. what's notable here, this is not a precise tally. they will not give us more exact figures than that very broad under 3,000 metric. here's secretary azhar today. >> i want to be really clear. a couple of you have said the word 3,000. i want to be clear it is under 3,000. i want to give you an outer bound, under 3,000. that is the maximum set. it will not be 3,000, it will not be close to 3,000. it will be under 3,000. >> reporter: one other detail did come from this call, they said zero have been r

>> reporter: according to hhs, they have said these children could end up in dangerous situations.h people with criminal backgrounds. they could end up with traffickers. they've given other examples as well, but as you mentioned, the judge firing back in this order, saying that hhs either doesn't understand the order or is acting in defiance of that order. then the judge also saying to be clear that this order does include checking the parentage, the fitness, and the danger of the children in this case and that the u.s. government has no excuse to sacrifice any of those things because according to this judge, the u.s. government has the resources to do all of it and to do it in time. >> right. in other words, the court may see this as some kind of an excuse. all right. rosa flores, thanks very much for that. >>> new progress today is being reported in the effort to return the remains of u.s. service members missing from the korean war. representatives from north korea and the united states say they have committed to meetings beginning tomorrow focusing on next steps. they've agreed

hhs has revised the number of children it says it has in custody.number is up from what hhs previously told us and it's still trying to figure out which children were separated from their parents and even doing some dna testing to sort all of this out. are you comfortable with how the trump administration has handled this policy? i mean, what is your reaction to the fact that they don't really seem to have, you know, any firm idea of where all of these kids are, how to get them reunited with their parents or even how many of these children they have? >> keep in mind a couple things. a lot of people were sent up without parents in the first place. it's a very dangerous journey. those that were sent up with their parents, there's a very intense process to get them back with the right people. think about it like this. if somebody shows up with a couple of kids and says these are my kids, nobody has identification on them. the government has to make sure is that in fact the children of the person that's claiming to be or is it a human trafficker or a c

but hhs, who's supposed to have these lists, ought to be able to make them public.an't make them public for some of the details and p f privacy of these kids, they ought to certainly let congress know who's supposed to be crafting a law right now in a bipartisan fashion to address this very issue. >> that's what kind of gets me. i get it, there's privacy issues. i guess i can get that. but why can't a member of congress get this information? do you think it is because they cannot provide you with a clear answer? or they just don't want to? >> i don't know. i mean it's certainly a good question. i was very surprised that -- i mean i couldn't even get the director in the facility to come out and give me some simple answers on how long is this facility been here, what are your hours of separation? just give me the basics. they wouldn't even open the door. obviously we heard there were several people in there. they were waiting for us when we got there. they knew we were coming. several people outside with radio communication. but unbelievable that your federal tax doll

let's play hhs secretary azar. this was just last week speaking with the finance committee about what he then said that they know. >> there is no reason whiny parent would not know where their child is located. i could at the key strokes -- i sat on the orr portal with just basic key strokes, within seconds can find any child in our care for my pattern. >> in court today when you were there, did they essentially take that back? >> well, they didn't mention the secretary's comments but it was very clear they could not match all the parents and child with the stroke of a keyboard. the judge asked very pointed questions. we originally went in there to talk about all 3,000 or so kids that have been separated. that deadline is not for july 26 for kids 5 and older. the judge made the correct decision to focus the hearing today on the children under 5, so that we can fix that problem. he said i want the government to submit a list to the plaintiffs for all 500 kids, and explain to each individual kid why you cannot reunit

. >> reporter: today hhs said it will meet a deadline to reunite migrant children younger than 5 by tuesday. >> we'll compile even if those deadlines prevent us from conducting standard even a vetting process. >> reporter: the agency is conducting dna tests by taking a cheek swab of every child. >> we're concerned this information could be used to potentially track these families and these children for the rest of their lives. >> reporter: previously hhs said it had about 2,000 separated children in custody but today it said there were just under 3,000 because the quart order required reunited them. of those, about 100 are younger than 5. it was this mother jocelyn from brazil who sued the government prompting a federal judge to impose the deadline. she was separated from her 14-year-old son for nine months. how does a mother survive for so long without knowing where her child is? >> reporter: we have to suffer a lot of pain she says. iculitnot knowing how they are. gabe gutierrez, nbc news, el paso, texas. >>> to a harrowing story out of texas. police in dallas say one mom's trip to the ga

. >> hhs and in some cases dhs health care personnel collects those via cheek swab. it is painless and harmless to the >> reporter: jonathan ryan is executive director of raices, a group working closely with families separated at the border. >> this is really an invasion into the most intimate private matter, data that we have about ourselves, our dna. it is irresponsible. it's a sign of the ultimate incompetence of the administration. >> rep and her daughter may be back together, but they're still fighting for asylum in separate immigration cases. now two out of a 300,000-case backlog. in several cases we've heard of parents being detained in one state and then their children being shipped across the country. bianna, today hhs confirmed they are trying to move those parents closer to their children in i.c.e. detention facilities. that way when they make that biological connection they can reunite those families a lot faster. >> mireya, i know you will will bt to follow this story.c make the most of a few minutes with ky natural feeling with aloe vera the martinez br

they interviewed 3,000 children in hhs care. just said how young some of these children are. >> what is your mommy's name? >> exactly. >> what would have happened if they would not have the whistle blown on them. did they ever have a plan of reuniting the kids with their parents? >> not clear if they did. you are given an a number. a child given a number and a parent with a different number. never a clear way how the government was going to bring the children together. they move the parents to a detention center near where the child was staying. it is complicated. >> this looks like, makes katrina look like disney world. thank you. new signs that michael cohen might be turning on president trump. his new layer says cohen has a new attitude on life right now. trump's brash talk over in europe. was this a warm up act for the president's visit. you are watching "hardball." i tend to play the tough guy. but i wasn't tough enough to quit on my own. not until i tried chantix. chantix, along with support, helps you quit smoking. it red

much work has been undertaken at sams a and across hhs to inch mountain the cures action, but we know this work is -- implement the cures act, but we know this work is far from over. i'm pleased to answer your questions today. thank you. >> thank you, dr. mccann. thank you for your testimony. this concludes the witness opening statement portion of the hearing. we'll move to member questions. i recognize myself, five minutes for questions. i want to begin by asking consent to place into the record a statement for the record by dr. billy phillips from texas tech university health science center. the professor of family community medicine, professor of public health and executive vice president for rural and community health at texas tech university describing their program of telemedicine, wellness, triage and referral. without objection so ordered. dr. mccann, let me just pull a couple of pieces out of this. dr. phillips tells us this program provides school-based screening assessment and referral services to students that are typically struggling with behavioral mental health issues a

each year, we also identify the top management and performance challenges facing hhs. while these challenges cover a wide range of critical departmental responsibility, ensuring medicare rupee -- remains a challenge. thank you for the opportunity to testify, and i am happy to answer questions you may have. >> thank you, mr. alexander, you are recognized. >> good morning, chairman lynn jenkins, darin lahood, and members of the subcommittee. thank you for the opportunity to discuss ongoing efforts to protect taxpayer dollars by protecting the integrity of the program. cms takes very seriously our responsibility to make sure we are paying the right amount, the right party, the right beneficiary in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations. is a former assistant united states attorney who is responsible for getting fraud, i have seen firsthand how medicare fraud can inflict real harm and beneficiaries. when fraudulent providers perform medically unnecessary tests, treatments, procedures, or surgeries, or prescribed dangerous drugs, program beneficiaries are put a

but the hhs's own press release said there were 27 kids, very specific, in a situation where there's been little specificity, 27 kids that are unlikely to be rey reunified, that is specific, what about the others, the remaining? their argument may be heartfelt, but it's designed to play on the heart strings. it's not playing out. it's about a policy of zero tolerance and still the president is still pushing. >> the numbers of course, mayor martinez, it does not add up to what he is seeing on the ground where he has 36 kids tonight under the age of 5 alone, and he said, almost a couple hundred in the 10-17 range. and this, john, it's important to understand, it's a nonpartisan issue, not just a human level, it's deep lly troubling, on a human level, there's republicans that are not happy with the handling of the issue. is this problem going to get bigger for the president? >> it's no sign that it's going to get smaller. they just blew past a deadline. the republicans have a political problem, and it's one rooted in values. there's one thing that unites us all it's the love for childre

. >> hhs and in some cas d.c.cting cheek swabs. >> reporter: jonathan ryan is a director of program working closely with families separated at the border. >> this is the most intimate and private matter we have about ourselves, our dna. and it's irresponsible and a sign of the incompetence of the trump administration. >> reporter: they may be back together, but they're still fighting for asylum in separate immigration cases. now two out of a 300,000-case backlog. in several cases we've heard of parents being detained in one state and their children being shipped across the country. hhs confirms, however, they're trying to move the parents closer to their children. that way once they make a biological connection, they can quickly reunite that family. mireya villarreal, cbs news, los angeles. >>> coming up on "cbs this morning," psychologist and cbs news contributor lisa damour tells us about the constructive ways teenagers can spend their summer months. >> plus we'll take you to a small town in wisconsin where two

after those toddlers and babies are brought back to their families that they were taken from, hhs will to go. the deadline for bringing all the kids back is the 26th of this month. whether mr. aczar's agency meets these deadlines or not, the fact the u.s. government separated these children from their parent wills be remembered as a sering moment in history. that will include the testimony documented in lawsuits filed against the government. this will be 900 pages of testimony in a suit brought by 17 states. these many, many declarations give us clear insight into what is like to have your child forcibly removed from you and handed over to hhs. one woman says that just after her son was taken from her, an immigration officer, quote, told me they were not going to give me asylum and i would not see him until he is 18 years old because they were going to put him up with an american family for adoption. that scared me a lot. another mother was given ten minutes to say good-bye to her children. the officers told her the children could not come with her to detention. quote, the older child,

she's huddling with people who are helping her in austin trying to work through the hhs system and zero information upon getting out of dhs custody yesterday and said she wants to come here in brownsville to knock on the door and ask, perhaps beg, for her kid back. jim? >> wow. miguel, that is painful to listen to. what about the government this afternoon saying it had to report to a judge and whether they're on track to reunite families by the deadline that was set by the judge? where does that stand right now? >> reporter: well, the immediate deadline coming up for them are the under 5s, kids 4, 0 to 4 that they have to reunite with their families. we have fresh numbers out of this hearing in san diego today. status conference basically. half of the parents in custody and 19 deported. we are also hearing from groups that some kids deported without kids and 19 deported without kids, kids without their parents and others are in custody still. the government saying we think we can make the deadline for most and some we won't and related to the dna testing and how quickly to verify who th

let's play hhs secretary asbrar, just last week speaking to the finance committee about what he then says they know. >> there's no reason why any parent would not know where their child is located. i could at a keystroke if i sat on the orr portal with just basic keystrokes within seconds could find any child in our care for any parent. >> in court today when you were there did they essentially take that back? >> well, they didn't mention the secretary's comments, but it was very clear they could not match a parent, all the parents and child with a stroke of their keyboard. the judge was asked very pointed questions. we originally went in there to talk about all 3,000 or so kids that have been separated. but that deadline is not until july 26th for kids 5 and older. what ultimately i think happened is the judge made the decision to focus the hearing today for children under 5, and so we could fix that problem. and he says i want the government to submit to the plaintiffs a list of all 100 that explained for each individual kid why you cannot reunite them and why you cannot find the p

. >> reporter: but hours earlier hhs secretary alex azar revealing almost 3,000 children remain in thernment's care, a number considerably higher than the roughly 2,000 reported by the agency last month. azar describing the situation as unprecedented and promising a compassionate process. a federal judge back on june 27th ordered the government to reunite families within 30 days, children under 5 within 14 days. for some including this guatemalan mother of three, a reunion didn't happen for several months. [ speaking a foreign language ] >> translator: thank god i found them in good conditions. >> reporter: but the conditions have been heavily criticized sparking demonstrations across the country. [ chanting ] >> reporter: outrage over images of children in detention centers and cages wrapped in foiled blankets and many questions remain about how the remaining children will be reunited with their families. hhs officials say they're conducting an exhaustive review of cases to determine which children in their custody have been separated and are even using dna testing to verify family me

potentially track these famili d these children for the rest of their lives. >> reporter: previously hhs said it had about 2,se0 rated children in custody but today it said there were just under 3,00use the quart order required reunited them. t 100 ose, ab are younger than 5. it was this mother jocelyn from brazil who sued the government prompting a federal judge to impose the deadline. she was separated from her 14-year-old son for nine months. how does a mother survive for so long without knowing where her child is? >> reporter: we have to suffer a lot of pain she says. it's very difficult not knowing how they are. gabe gutierrez, nbc news, el paso, texas. >>> to a harrowing story out of texas. police in dallas say one mom's trip to the gas station turnin a terrifying fight to save her children when a carjacker tried to steal the suv with the ki still inside. nbc's catie beck has more on the terrifying ordeal. >> it happened so fast. not even five minutes. >> reporter: still shaken, michelle asked us not to reveal her identity. >> if someone was trying to do ing, any harm to my kids, i

once we turn them over at hhs, they became responsibility of hhs.ll we did was process them for unlawful entry into the country and we issue them a notice of removable proceedings and we'll release them to oftentimes to family members who are here in the country and sometimes illegally and sometimes legally. the expectations was for them to appear in court and have their due process rights and honored and apply for relief or removal or for siasylum. that was the end of it. parents are bringing their kids to a torturous journey to guatemala and mexico and into the united states. >> know that we are talking about parent and their kids, the president have made this about gang members coming in and he talked about watching i.c.e. liberates towns. that's the kind of term you use when you are talking about war. is that the appropriate terminology based on what you have seen. are there towns out there that needs to be liberated that over run with dangerous criminals from other countries? >> i think the rhetoric that's coming out of the white house is unfor

i think hhs is moving along on this. i know there are those who want to make a bigger issue of this than it is. it is moving along. it will be done. i can tell you that having spent a lot of time on the hill last month, they want these families reunited. it's also interesting in the wake of a harvard/harris poll that was just conducted that something like 60% of americans say these families not only need to be reunited, but they need to be sent home. the cry for strong border patrol and addressing chaos, it's there. >> we haven't necessarily heard from the president to say anything about that. that it is painful to watch, any response to those who say it is immoral that these families cannot be reyou if iunified fas. he did say a while back it was hurtful to see. but now it's a matter of action. it's been days now. >> i think we're unscrambling this policy. and we didn't get here overnight. we didn't here because of president trump or president obama alone. >> actually, we did. >> it's the legislative branch that creates

you're just off that call with the secretary of hhs. and joining me now is kate lincolngold.orking with separated motherings. thank you very much for being with us. i saw your interview with rachel maddow monday night and was struck by what an i.c.e. officer told you on how the policy is not being carried out. you say your clients, these mothers in detention, are not being granted bond. is that still the case? >> yes. my clients still have not been granted bond and across the board we're seeing efforts by i.c.e. to delay, deny and deport as many of these parents as possible. so we're seeing long time, wait times for the credible fear interviews. denials of the credible fear interviews. >> and those are the interviews -- just to clarify, those credible fear interviews with the interviews that are supposed to be legally mandated so people can explain their credible fears of returning to their home countries? >> that's correct, it's the first step in the asylum process. historically, asylum seekers, after passing a credible fear interview, get out of detention. we're not seeing

hhs, it seems, is treating these adults, these parents, as though they are strangers to their own kidscompanied minors as they say, that they crossed the border alone, and these adults now have to prove that they are their kids so there's a 32-page form. it involves a lot of documentation that these individuals now don't have, and it will take weeks, if not months, for these individuals to not only fill out that paperwork but then get to the place where their kids are and then make that reunion happen. it's going to be very, very difficult to make this happen by that 26th deadline. it is amazing to see the breadth of this. some of these parents bonding out on their asylum process. some of them have been deported. some of the kids have been deported without their parents. some of the parents have been released and hhs now saying that while it knows where a lot of the parents are, it doesn't know where some of the parents are, so even those under 5s, that deadline coming up on tuesday, it is not sure that it can make that deadline either. the government has said to us all along that they

these are the individuals that the dhs and hhs are having a hard time keeping track of, because onceer know exactly where they are and they have no way to hook them up with their kids. as amazing as it may seem, when they separated these families at the beginning of this process, they didn't ensure parentage then. they're only trying to do it now on the backside so they're basically saying to these parents, you have to prove to us that these are your kids. ryan. >> miguel marquez in brownsville, texas, reporting on this situation that continues to be more complicated as opposed to less complicated. thank you, miguel. >>> let's talk more about this reunification process with jennifer falcon, the communications director for raices, a nonprofit that offers free or low cost legal services to immigrants and refugees. jennifer, i want to start with the trump administration saying it's going to need more time to reunite these families. what's your reaction to that news? >> i think that that news is a clear indication that the administration has no idea where the families are and how to reun

higher than the 2,000 first reported by hhs. new numbers were revealed in a call with reporters, describing the situation as unprecedented and promising the resulting reunifications will be as compassionate as can be. the court deadline says that they have to be reunited by july 26th. but there are questions on how it will be done. in a series of tweets, the president wrote when people with or without children enter our country, they must be told to leave. tell the people out, and they must leave, just as if they were standing on your front lawn. and there are 11 unaccompanied migrant children being cared for at this church facility, and hhs secretary says they will use dna screening to determine family relationships and reunite all of those separated families. marcus moore, abc news, ft. worth, texas. >>> we're hearing new details about the fourth of july activist who forced a shutdown ofheibtyd so conduct. here is whit johnson. >> reporter: federal charges for the woman at the center of this fourth of july takedown, patricia o

yesterday the hhs secretary gave a ballpark number for children.ecause they don't know how many kids have been separated from their families. next major deadline is next tuesday where they have to by court order reunite children under 5 with their families. there is no sign they have a handle on that problem. we have two children under 5. the idea they could be separated from us is so horrific and the fact that people don't have the moral imagination, the empathy, to say those could be my kids and that we know from government lawyers that there was never any plan to reunify. that is outrageous. no sign they have capacity to make it better. >> we are still asking the same questions now how many weeks in, right, margaret? the fact it's not dealt with, speaks to the chaos in the administration and paints a picture, a disturbing picture of whether there's a will here in some parts of the administration tie directive is not coming from the top. tone comes from the top. not the attorney general and not the president of the united states and head of the h

the hhs, health and human services, says it is trying to make those reunifications. trying to check parentage and making sure they have the right parents but all of this from a policy without any sort of thought about how they were going to put the children back in the arms of parents who the government took away. this is a bad start because they have thousands more kids they need to repatriate with their families on july 26. that process in the hands of that judge. they have worked out a deal that there will be an expedited process rather than what hhs wants to do which is take a month, two months to get those families back together. they will try to figure out who the parents are very quickly with existing documents, perhaps dna in some cases and get those families back together but just a story that is indroecredible see play out because the government never gave one thought to how they were going to put them back together. >> you're right. it's hard to explain what is happening at the border. the trump administration missed the deadline to reunite all of the chil

. >>> up next, an update from the hhs. department of health and human services on just how the trump administration is reunifying families split at the border and how many are still in government care. are you a christian author with a book that you're ready to share with the world? get published now, call for your free publisher kit today! >>> breaking news now on the trump administration efforts to reunify migrant children separated from their families at the u.s./mexico border. the department of health and human services just wrapped up a call to update reporters on the reunification process and how many children are still in government custody. cnn's sunlen serfaty was on that call. she joins us at the table. >> we have some new information, by still, short of a full accounting of what's going on with these kids at the border as the agency works to reunify them. the hhs secretary just got off the call with reporters. he says they're currently holding 11,800 minors, that includes 80% of the kids who showed up at the bor