By Gabriel Lerner | Hispanic LA
The separation of families during President Donald Trump’s administration – thousands of children were torn away from their parents and hundreds are still unaccounted for – was only possible because of the intensity of the hatred that the former president and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party felt and continue to feel against immigrants in general and undocumented immigrants, in particular.
Between April 2018 and June 2020, Trump issued a presidential decree by which adults arrested in the act of illegally crossing the border were criminally prosecuted and locked up in jail during judicial proceedings. Thus, they were separated from their children. A separation that continued even after the parents were deported to their countries of origin – Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras – and in the face of which Republican government officials showed an indifference to human suffering comparable to that exercised in dictatorial countries.
Thousands of families shattered
It is not known for certain how many children were taken from their parents, but the number is estimated to be between 3,800 and 5,500. Separations usually lasted a few weeks, but in many cases have lasted years, and there are still between 700 and 1,000 children who have not yet been located because the authorities at the time did not bother to document their whereabouts.
They were mostly sent to distant relatives or care homes. After they were settled, the children were allowed to establish telephone contact with their parents if they were still behind bars.
Other children remained in the custody of the Customs and Border Protection Agency (CPB), and held illegally for up to 100 days, in violation of the 1997 Flores Agreement which states that children accompanied by their parents at the border cannot remain in custody for more than 20 days. Flores also requires the government to place unaccompanied children in facilities authorized by the states to care for minors and in any case, neither locked up nor punished.
Zero-tolerance policy
The separation of children from their parents was part of a “zero tolerance” policy toward illegal immigration adopted by the previous administration, and part of former President Donald Trump’s war on immigrants, both legal and undocumented.
When the forced separation of children from their families was made public, it unleashed a wave of criticism, both within the country – and even among Republican lawmakers – and abroad. Pope Francis called the separation of families “an immoral act.”
Eventually, Trump had to back down in the face of the criticism, and on June 19, 2018, he ordered that the children remain with their parents for the duration of the legal process against them. He did so after he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen spent months falsely claiming that their hands were tied by federal laws and court rulings and that they could not prevent the separation of families apprehended at the border. And he did so by falsely pretending that he was a champion of leaving families together and that the separation policy began during the Obama presidency.
Relief comes with Biden
On his first day as president, Biden issued an executive order to reunite families. That same month, he created an interagency task force to locate the children and return them to their parents. But it was not until July 2022 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ordered its agents to ensure that they do not voluntarily or involuntarily separate parents from their children at the southern border or when making arrests of undocumented immigrants inside the country.
In February of this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had successfully reunited an additional 700 children with their parents in addition to those returned during the latter part of the Trump administration, making 75% of the total already reunited with their families.
Who is defending immigrant families?
A handful of lawyers, activists and organizations are defending immigrant families, now with the help of the federal government and the United Nations.
These include Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU; Gina Amato, director of the Immigrant Rights Project Public Counsel; attorney Carole Ann Donohoe of the organization Al Otro Lado; activists with Together and Free, which offers advice and help to families of separated children; and law firms like Sidley Austin, which provides legal assistance.
At the international level, as of May 1, unification operations are being run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations agency, replacing Kids in Need of Defense (KIND), the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and Justice In Motion, another organization dedicated to migrants at the border, among others.
Together, these groups and the current federal government are offering assistance in obtaining permission for parents to re-enter the United States, “if applicable,” in residing here for up to three years under humanitarian parole, with the possibility of applying for work authorization, and in obtaining the assistance necessary for a successful reunification with the children from whom they were separated.
What remains to be done
Although the terrible practice of family separation has ended, not everything has been solved. Congress has so far refused to authorize compensation for separated families. When the White House floated the idea, Republicans repudiated it, saying it was equivalent to giving a million dollars to each “illegal.”
Hundreds of children have not yet been located. And only in February 2023 was it revealed that in addition, between 400 and 1,000 separated children were born here and are therefore U.S. citizens. These minors are strangely disadvantaged compared to other children, as their citizenship status automatically places them under the supervision of each state’s child welfare authorities, complicating efforts to locate and connect them with their parents.
Some 226 of these children were placed in child protection agency facilities in California, where they are accounted for. But hundreds were turned over to foster care in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, again, without adequate and sufficient documentation to quickly return them to their families.
Let it not happen again
Finally, we have no guarantees that this horror will not be repeated. Former President Donald Trump, now the frontrunner for the Republican ticket in 2024, refused to rule out doing so again at an election event last month, should he win re-election. His former vice president, Mike Pence, who is also a presidential candidate for November 2024, said that if elected he would not renew the program.
Still, the United States has autonomy in its treatment of children, being, along with Somalia, the only country in the world that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, signed by 195 nations.
If you were separated from your son, daughter or daughters between January 2018 and January 2022 after entering the border and have not been able to locate them, you can register on this government site to help you reunite with your family. The site has recordings and instructions in four indigenous languages: M’am, Ki’che, Q’echi’ and Q’anjob’al, as well as in English, Spanish or Portuguese. Families can apply for reunification services and receive counseling to apply for a humanitarian conditional permit that will allow them to come to the United States, among other resources.
This story was originally published in Spanish by Hispanic LA.
