Yet now, eight years later, the Trump administration is again separating families, except this time it’s doing so more quietly, and away from the border: Federal agents have picked up hundreds of immigrant children in the interior of the country and sent them to ORR, a vast departure from prior administrations, when interior referrals to the agency were rare. Anywhere from 500 to more than 700 of these kids, according to sources familiar with the cases, had previously crossed the border alone and spent time in ORR custody, but were living with their sponsors when ICE returned them to the agency. These “re-referrals” are the subject of lawsuits and investigations.

But there’s another group of kids that has received less attention—kids like Andrés who were sent to ORR even though they were never unaccompanied. It’s unclear how many children fall into this category, because ORR doesn’t systematically track them, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ignored our questions about them. But a source with knowledge of federal immigration data told us they now make up a “huge chunk” of ORR’s caseload.