McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) -- Several migrant advocacy organizations have released a report examining years of family separation policies enacted under the Trump administration to remind the public and lawmakers of what transpired. Border Report Live: ‘Border czar’ accepts Texas land as others push back on deportations The 131-page report, "We Need to Take Away Children: Zero Accountability Six Years After ‘Zero Tolerance,'" was produced and released Monday by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project and Yale Law School's Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic. "The reason we've been working on such a long and exhaustive report is we really wanted to be sure to document exactly what happened under family separation back in 2017 and 2018 and to also show what has happened with accountability for the harms intentionally inflicted on families under family separation. And the answer there is that there has been no accountability for anybody who implemented that policy. So we just thought that that was important to tell the public and tell policymakers," Danny Woodward, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project told Border Report just prior to the report's release. To date, an estimated 1,360 children have not been reunited with their parents. That's roughly 30% of the estimated 4,600 migrant children who were taken from their parents after crossing the border in 2017 and 2018, according to the report. (Human Rights Watch Graphic) This inflicted pain and suffering are still being felt by families today, the authors say. “It’s chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy,” said Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children’s rights counsel at Human Rights Watch and an author of the report. “A government should never target children to send a message to parents.” "Forcible family separations may also have resulted in torture, defined as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering for an improper purpose by a state agent," the report found. The authors claim these acts are "human rights violations" and warns congressional lawmakers about future policies enacted toward immigrants when President-elect Donald Trump takes office for a second term on Jan. 20. A group of migrant families walk from the Rio Grande, the river separating the U.S. and Mexico in Texas, near McAllen, Texas, March 14, 2019. A Biden administration effort to reunite children and parents who were separated under President Donald Trump's zero-tolerance border policy has tried to reunite families. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File) "Fully reckoning with the serious human rights violations inherent in forcible family separations requires a public accounting, an apology, compensation, and other steps to ensure that these wrongs never recur," the report says. The report also urges U.S. senators not to confirm for government positions those were part of Zero Tolerance -- the formal policy that enacted family separations. Trump’s pick to lead Homeland Security pressed on origins of family-separation policy However, many of those specifically named in the report are not up for Senate confirmation. This includes Tom Homan, who has been picked as Trump's "border czar," which is an advisory role to the president, similar to the role that Stephen Miller has been tapped for as deputy chief of staff for policy. Both were instrumental in implementing Zero Tolerance during the first administration as a deterrence to prevent migrant families from illegally crossing the Southwest border. President-elect Trump speaks at an election night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo) Tom Homan, left, is seen in a April 26, 2018 photo in East Point, Ga., and Stephen Miller is seen in a Oct. 9, 2024, photo in Reading, Pa. "We wanted to call folks out by name who are responsible for family separations, so even if the Senate doesn't have to confirm them, the public and other policy makers are aware of kind of what they were responsible for under the last administration. And know the kind of things they might be thinking about moving forward, and really try to keep an eye on it and make sure that something is harmful as family separation does not happen again," Woodward said. Trump has not said whether he will implement a "zero-tolerance" or family separations policy again but has promised mass deportations of migrants when he takes office. Trump mass deportation threats infuriate immigrant advocates Woodward says deporting those without resolved U.S. immigration cases would equate to family separations for the thousands of mixed-status families in the United States. However, it would be by a different method than previously used, which garnered worldwide criticism. And according to the report, family separations were also criticized by U.S. Border Patrol agents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers and other Department of Homeland Security personnel as well as those working for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and U.S. Health and Human Services. According to the report, children were taken and separated from their parents when the parents were taken to court on criminal charges of illegal entry and in the custody of U.S. Marshals. At that time, the children were with CBP officers. "In the meantime, however, DHS, the federal government department that includes CBP, had deemed their children to be unaccompanied. DHS agents not only knew exactly where the parents were but also knew that the parents would quickly return to CBP detention. Even so, the department treated the brief change in custody as meaning that parents were not “available” to provide care. ... DHS transferred the children it had separated to ORR, without planning for or putting measures in place that would enable authorities to reunite them with their parents," the report says. Woodward says they compiled documentation showing the federal government did not have an adequate plan for tracking the children. And the report finds that federal agents better track personal property of migrants than migrant children. "The government readily keeps track of personal property of detainees in criminal and immigration proceedings. Money, important documents, and automobiles, to name a few, are routinely catalogued, stored, tracked and produced upon a detainees’ release, at all levels—state and federal, citizen and alien. Yet, the government has no system in place to keep track of, provide effective communication with, and promptly produce alien children," according to the report. Woodward says the report cannot change what transpired, but they hope it will remind the public of what happened and prevent it from reoccurring. "It's really just trying to keep it in the conversation. As we get into, like, all the politics around Senate nominations, I think the human impact of those is what we really want to try to emphasize," he said. Sandra Sanchez can be reached at [email protected].