The Tragedy of Migrant Children Separated from their Parents Continues
The separation of families, during the administration of President Donald Trump – for which thousands of children were torn from their parents and several hundred of them still have not been located – was only possible because of the intensity of the hatred that the President and the MAGA wing of the Republican party felt and still feel against immigrants in general and the undocumented in particular. A hatred that has not been extinguished. An evil of which they have not repented.
This is how this persecution and its aftermath were unleashed to this day, when the drama of children torn from their parents’ arms does not end.
Parents can still register
If you, between January 2018 and January 2022, were separated from your son or daughter after entering the border illegaly and you have not been able to locate them, you can register on this government site to help you reunify 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 request reunification services there and receive counseling to apply for a humanitarian parole that allows them to come to the United States.
The drama of children taken from their parents at the border during the presidency of Donald Trump has not yet been fully resolved.
Between April 2018 and June 2020, in order to stop undocumented immigration, Trump issued a presidential decree whereby adults arrested in the act of illegally crossing the border were criminally prosecuted and locked up in jail for the duration of the legal proceedings. They were then 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.
The site that offers aid from the federal government expands its offer to all those whose children were separated between January 20, 2017 and January 20, 2021, that is, during the entire presidency of Donald Trump, because even after the announcement of the cessation of separations, these continued, although at a slower pace.
Thousands of families torn apart
It is not known for sure how many children were taken from their parents, but the number is estimated to be between 3,800 and 5,500. The separations usually lasted just a few weeks, but in many cases they have taken 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 properly document their whereabouts.
They were mostly sent to distant relatives or care homes. After they settled, they were allowed to establish telephone contact with their parents, if they were still behind bars.
Other children remained in the custody of CBP, the Customs and Border Protection Agency, and were illegally held for 100 days or more, in violation of the 1997 Flores Agreement, which establishes that children accompanied by their parents at the border cannot remain under custody for more than 20 days. This important agreement was litigated by lawyers Peter Schey and Carlos Holguín from the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law.
Likewise, Flores requires that the government place unaccompanied children in facilities authorized by the states to care for minors and, in any case, neither locked up nor punished.
The ‘Zero tolerance’ policy against migrant children
The separation of children from their parents was part of the “zero tolerance” policy for illegal immigration, part of former President Donald Trump’s war against immigrants, both legal and illegal.
When the forced separation of the children from their families became public, it unleashed a wave of criticism, both within the country – and even among Republican legislators – and abroad. Pope Francis called the separation of families “an immoral act.”
Ultimately, Trump had to back down because of the criticism, and on June 19, 2018, he ordered that the children were to remain with their parents for the duration of the legal proceedings against them. He did so after he and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen falsely claimed for months 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 it by falsely pretending that he was a champion of keeping families together and that he inherited the separation policy from the Obama presidency.
An end to the shame
On his first day as president – January 20th, 2021- 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 only in July 2022, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) ordered its agents to ensure that parents are not voluntarily or involuntarily separated from their children at the southern border or when making arrests of undocumented immigrants within the country.
In February of this year, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had managed to reunite 700 children with their parents in addition to those returned during the last part of the Trump administration, with which 75% of the total have already been reunited with their families, it said.
Who defends immigrant families?
A handful of lawyers, activists and organizations defend immigrant families, now with some help from the federal government and the United Nations.
We mention Lee Gelernt, attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU; and other specialists in this important organization, Gina Amato, director of the Public Counsel Immigrant Rights Project, attorney Carole Ann Donohoe from Al Otro Lado; to the activists of the organization Together and Free, who offer advice and help to families of separated children at (332) 244 5301; law firms like Sidley Austin, who provide legal help for free. Carlos Holguin himself, who has represented thousands of migrant children in federal custody.
At the international level, as of May 1, unification operations are in charge of 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 immigrants at the border, among others.
Together, these groups and the current federal government are offering to help obtain permission for the parents to re-enter the United States, “if applicable,” to reside here for up to three years on humanitarian parole, with the possibility of requesting work authorization and obtaining the necessary help for a successful reunification with the children from whom they were separated.
What’s left to do
Despite the fact that this reprehensible practice has stopped and another government is now in power, not everything has been solved. Congress has so far refused to authorize compensation for separated families. When the White House considered the idea, the Republican caucus repudiated it, saying that it was akin to giving a million dollars to each “illegal.”
Hundreds of children are still not located. And only in February 2023 it was revealed that in addition, between 400 and 1,000 of the separated children were born here and are therefore US 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 them were placed in facilities of child protection agencies in California, where they are accounted for. But hundreds were released to foster homes in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, again without adequate documentation from the Border Patrol and sufficient documentation to quickly return them to their families.
Do not let it happen again
Finally, we have no guarantee that this horror will not be repeated. Former President Donald Trump refused to rule out doing it at his own election event last month, if re-elected, though his vice president and fellow presidential candidate for November 2024, Mike Pence, said this week that if elected he would not revive the program.
And the United States has relative 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 all the other 195 nations.
This article was supported in whole or in part by funds provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library and the Latino Media Collaborative.
