Dems to Vote on Trump Admin Subpoenas

WASHINGTON (AP) -- House Democrats are laying the groundwork to subpoena Trump administration officials over family separations at the southern border.

The Oversight Committee will vote Tuesday on whether to approve subpoenas to the heads of Justice, Homeland Security and Health and Human Services. With Democrats as a majority, the authorization is expected, but it's still not clear whether the subpoenas will actually be served.

If they are, they would be some of the first issued in the new Congress. House Democrats have promised to hold the administration aggressively to account. The committee's chairman, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, has pledged to press the administration for documents and testimony on a wide swath of issues, but family separation was among his first priorities.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the committee's ranking Republican, sent Cummings a letter arguing that the subpoenas would not be necessary, and that the administration had produced hundreds of pages of documents in response to earlier requests for information.

"We should not rush to compel documents from the departments, especially when they have sought to comply with your request voluntarily," Jordan wrote.

The House Judiciary Committee authorized a subpoena to compel then-acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker to testify if necessary, but it was never served.

If subpoenas are issued and officials don't comply, the committee and eventually the full House could vote to hold the department in contempt, setting up a potentially lengthy court battle.

More than 2,700 children were separated from their parents at the border last year under a zero-tolerance policy by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that criminally prosecuted anyone caught crossing the border illegally.

Because children can't be placed with their parents in jail, they were separated. Watchdog reports have found the administration was not prepared to manage the aftermath of the separations, and had no way to track the families together and did not have a way to reunite them until a federal judge stepped in.

The Oversight Committee is seeking details on the children separated, location and facility where they were held, details on the parents, information on efforts to restore children to their parents, and whether parents were deported.

An internal watchdog report recently found that thousands more children than previously thought could have been separated before the zero-tolerance policy officially began. Immigration officials are allowed to separate children if there is a concern for the child's well-being, if a parent has a criminal charge, or if there are serious health risks.

(KA)