“It’s a horrible thing. And it’s a lot bigger than 5,000 people,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday afternoon. “And we got to stop them at the border.”

The refugee resettlement office came under fire last summer after the White House and the Homeland Security Department began separating families at the border. The health department was responsible for caring for separated children, and then for trying to reunite them with their families under a court order. Facing a public outcry over the children’s plight, HHS Secretary Alex Azar later removed Lloyd from day-to-day operations.

Azar has now empowered Johnson, a political appointee who was a longtime Colorado human services official, to review and make changes at the refugee office.

Johnson acknowledged that ORR has been her focus but told POLITICO she’s still in the learning curve stage of her new job. “I’ll handle personnel issues as appropriate when they come up and when I see something,” Johnson said. “But I don’t see anything yet. I need to be here longer than 35 days.”

Asked specifically about Lloyd, she praised him. “He’s on top of it. ... He knows what’s going on,” Johnson said.

Lloyd has been the target of lawsuits for his efforts to block and in some cases personally intercede when migrant teenage girls under his agency’s care have sought abortions. Separately, his management decisions leading up to the migrant crisis hurt the agency’s response and led to his effective removal as refugee office director during the summer, say three individuals.

HHS said it would not comment on personnel matters or address Lloyd’s decisions in the run-up to the migrant crisis.

“We do not conduct performance reviews in the press,” said a spokesperson.

At the height of the summer’s crisis, the HHS refugee office was caring for more than 2,000 migrant children that the Trump administration separated from their families at the border under its “zero-tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants. A federal judge on June 26 ordered the administration to reunite the separated families within 30 days — a process severely complicated because HHS and Homeland Security hadn’t planned for that scenario.

Nearly 250 children separated at the border still remained in HHS custody as of last week. About 13,000 other migrant children also are in agency custody — the highest number ever — as the Trump administration has slowed down releasing the children to families and other sponsors.

Inside HHS, the crisis quickly became the biggest test of Azar’s tenure, as public health groups condemned the agency for separating families. (The separation policy was set by the White House and Homeland Security, but HHS became responsible for the children). Azar and his lieutenants also were frustrated by the lack of planning within the refugee office, some of which spilled into public view.

Jonathan White — a career official who had left the refugee office after Lloyd began blocking the teens’ abortions — in July testified to a Senate committee that he had warned officials about the health risks of separating children from their parents, but that he was reassured there was no need to plan for that possibility.

“The answer was there was no policy which would result in separation of children from family units,” White testified on July 31.

That assessment turned out to be wrong, and HHS was ill-prepared to handle the sudden surge in unaccompanied children, some of whom were very young.

For instance, three individuals with knowledge of the operation said Lloyd made decisions that complicated reunifications. For instance, Lloyd directed his staff to stop keeping a spreadsheet tracking separated families.

As the crisis mounted, and HHS scrambled to determine how many migrant children had been separated from their parents, Azar learned that Lloyd’s office had yet to review hundreds of case files to understand the scope of the problem, despite being instructed to do so. Azar began reviewing case files personally that night.

By mid-July, Lloyd was effectively removed from running his office as the agency rushed to reunite separated families under a court order and amid public outrage, but hit bottlenecks in the refugee office, two individuals told POLITICO. Lloyd’s staff instead reported to the agency’s emergency response team, including his former deputy White. Azar had tapped the team to help coordinate refugee reunifications — an unusual role for a group that normally handles disasters like hurricanes and disease outbreaks.

But Johnson, who served for more than a decade as human services director in Colorado’s Jefferson County, on Monday praised Lloyd. “Scott has been doing a fantastic job, considering the numbers” of people at the border, she told POLITICO.

Johnson specifically deflected questions about Lloyd’s future. “I have not locked in with a decision that he needs to be gone at all,” she said.

Despite internal frustration, HHS political leadership has been careful not to publicly criticize Lloyd, who has influential supporters in the anti-abortion movement and within the White House.

Meanwhile, HHS leaders are currently strategizing about how to handle the thousands of migrant children currently in the agency’s custody. The agency has run out of room at its traditional facilities and has turned to temporary shelters, which are significantly more expensive. HHS is spending about $1,000 per child per day at the tent city in Tornillo, Texas, and at other temporary facilities, according to three individuals briefed on the latest data. The data also show that the average migrant child has been in HHS custody for more than 70 days, roughly double the 35 days in custody under the Obama administration.

Azar recently told Congress that he would transfer more than $440 million to cover the cost of caring for migrant children and their families.

During this summer’s crisis, officials lamented that the agency needed more experienced hands who knew how to handle government bureaucracy — someone like Johnson, who served as a senior official under Colorado Gov. Bill Owens earlier in her career in addition to her work as a human services director and a parole officer.

“Lynn Johnson is very focused on the solutions,” said an official who’s spoken with her about the current review. “But there’s nothing easy about this.”