Nielsen: US may apprehend 900,000 undocumented immigrants at southern border this year

"The projections are dire," Nielsen told the House Homeland Security Committee during a contentious hearing.

Democrats are using the hearing to question Nielsen about administration policy which resulted in the separation of thousands of children from their parents last year.

"The secretary has said the administration had no policy to separate children from their parents, but internal memoranda make clear she was aware the administration's policy would require families to be separated," said committee chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

"No amount of verbal gymnastics will change that she knew the Trump administration was implementing policy to separate families at the border," he added.

Nielsen has previously testified that the department "never had a policy for family separation."

In January, however, Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, released a 2017 memo drafted by senior officials in the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice detailing the plans.

Nielsen is at the core of the heated debate over President Donald Trump's signature border wall, which led to the longest government shutdown in US history earlier this year and, most recently, the national emergency declaration.

On Tuesday, Customs and Border Protection officials announced that families and unaccompanied children make up more than 60% of apprehensions along the southern border. They're predominantly from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. More than 76,000 people were apprehended or deemed inadmissible at a port of entry in February.

This, combined with an influx of groups of over 100 people illegally crossing the border, has presented a unique challenge to CBP. In previous years, the agency dealt primarily with single adults from Mexico who could be quickly returned. But because most crossings now are family members from the so-called Northern Triangle countries, the US does not have the infrastructure to accommodate the influx.

As a result, DHS, along with the President, has dubbed the situation along the southern border a national security and humanitarian crisis. Immigration advocates, for their part, have pushed back on it being a national security crisis.

The administration thus far has relied on deterrence to stem the flow of migrants, through policies like "zero tolerance" and the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, informally known as "Remain in Mexico."

The US began to implement the policy, which requires some asylum seekers to await their immigration court hearings in Mexico, at the San Ysidro border crossing and plans to expand it to other locations along the border. A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups has asked a federal judge for a restraining order that would block the program.

Similarly, the latest revelations about the administration's "zero tolerance" policy that led to family separation will lend themselves to some testy exchanges. Government reports have painted a picture of chaos and confusion since the policy ended last year. In January, a Health and Human Services Department inspector general report that found thousands more children had been separated than previously acknowledged.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

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