[Vause:] You're watching CNN NEWSROOM live from Los Angeles. I'm John Vause. We'll check the headlines this hour. Negotiators from the U.S. and North Korea are working to refine the on-again, off-again summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un. Talks have been taking place in the Korean Demilitarized Zone as well as in Singapore where the summit is scheduled for June 12. Italy
[Rosa Flores, Cnn Correspondent:] Nearly 1,500 children falling through the cracks of a broken immigration system, raising questions about Attorney General Jeff Sessions new zero-tolerance policy that leads to separating more children from their parents and placing them in the custody of the United States government.
[Jeff Sessions, U.s. Attorney General:] If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you. And that child maybe separated from you as required by law.
[Flores:] The Department of Health and Human Services publicly admitting last month that it had checked on 7,600 kids placed in sponsor homes and couldn't account for about 1,500.
[Senator Heidi Heitkamp , North Dakota:] We're failing. I don't think there's any doubt about it. You are the worst foster parents in the world. You don't even know where they are.
[Flores:] And the agency acknowledging it's not even trying to find where the kids are.
[Senator James Lankford , Oklahoma:] We now have a child somewhere in the country that didn't appear in the court record and is not in their spot that we thought they were. Is there a pursuit trying to ferret where they are or what happens next?
[Unidentified Male:] There is not a pursuit.
[Flores:] Rick Santorum counterpointing the concern for the children expressed by senators on both sides of the aisle and suggested its sponsors failing to follow up with HHS does not mean the children are in danger. Rick Santorum, former Republican senator: The idea that they're quote, "lost", I think is an overestimate is hyperbole to try to create an issue. I don't really think there is one. The findings from a 2016 Senate subcommittee report show the problem is it's partisan. That even during the Obama administration more oversight was needed. The reports say HHS'policies and procedures are inadequate to protect the children in the agency's care. So much so the report found that the children were placed in the hands of human traffickers. Like this case from 2014 in which a number of immigrants were forced to work at an egg farm in Ohio for up to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week and in inhumane conditions and without pay. And even though federal officials say that legally, they don't need to find these children, they don't need to track them down and make sure that they're not in dangerous conditions, senators both Republican and Democrat raised the question does the United States have the moral responsibility to make sure that these children are not in danger? Rosa Flores, CNN San Antonio Texas.
[Vause:] The deputy secretary of Health and Human Services says the reports of lost children are misleading; that their sponsors simply had not responded to follow-up calls from the department. The U.S. embassy in Nicaragua will be closed Tuesday in anticipation of more demonstrations. Protesters are demanding President Daniel Ortega step down and it appears he's losing support from the Catholic Church as well as the private sector. At least 77 people have reportedly been killed in these demonstrations which began last month after changes to social welfare. Coming up on Wednesday, CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has an exclusive report on an elite gang-fighting police squad in El Salvador which includes former members of a controversial unit alleged to have acted as a death squad. Here's a look.
[Nick Paton Walsh, Cnn Correspondent:] It's an undeclared war here in El Salvador elite police against MS-13, a gang menace that beheads, rapes, and terrorizes. And it's America's war, too because President Trump has declared MS-13 "animals" that must be eliminated. And these men are fighting with U.S. money and help. We're headed now to one of the scenes of the more prominent killings
[Vause:] Tune in Wednesday for the rest of Nick's report showing 5:00 a.m. in London and noon in Hong Kong. Well, Alberto has been downgraded to a subtropical depression but it's already claimed the lives of two journalists. We'll have details on that in just moment.