Trump administration family separation policy

ProPublica recording of crying children separated from their families.

Detained children sitting within a wire mesh compartment in the Ursula detention facility in McAllen, Texas

Detained children in a wire mesh compartment, showing sleeping mats and thermal blankets on floor

Photos provided by Custom and Border Protection. Reporters were not allowed to take their own photos.

The Trump administration family separation policy, described by the Trump administration as part of its "zero tolerance" policy, is an enforcement aspect of U.S. President Donald Trump's immigration policy. The policy was implemented in April 2018, and, following immense public opposition and political pressure, was suspended for an indefinite period of time on June 20, 2018, through an executive order.

Under the policy, federal authorities separated children from their parents, relatives, or other adults who accompanied them in crossing the border, whether apprehended during an illegal crossing or, in a number of reported cases, legally presenting themselves for asylum. The policy involved prosecuting all adults who were detained at the U.S.–Mexico border, sending the parents to federal jails and placing children and infants under the supervision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Trump administration justified its policy by falsely claiming that they were required by law to implement it and that Democrats were at fault. Attorney General Jeff Sessions defended the policy, citing the Bible. Other administration officials argued that the policy was intended to deter immigration or be used as political leverage to force Democrats and moderate Republicans to accept hardline immigration legislation.

In April and May 2018, an average of 45 children were taken from their parents per day. According to the HHS, the policy led to the separation of over 2,300 children from their parents, though others said the figure may have been much higher. Authorities made the decision to take children from their parents without a plan to reunite families, resulting in numerous cases of parents and children having no contact since being forcefully separated. To enforce the administration's policy, federal prosecutors had to divert resources from other criminal cases. The fiscal costs of separating children from their parents were approximately three times higher than keeping families intact in detention centers.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association condemned the policy, with the American Academy of Pediatrics saying that the policy has caused "irreparable harm" to the children.

Following the suspension of the policy, the children that were already separated from their parents remain interned; the Department of Health and Human Services stated that the status of children already detained will not be affected by the Executive Order, and will not be immediately reunited with their families.

History

Bush administration

President George W. Bush began the trend of a "zero tolerance" approach in 2005 with Operation Streamline, but during his administration, exceptions were generally made for adults traveling with minors.

Obama administration

President Barack Obama made changes to immigration policy, releasing parents and focusing on deportation of immigrants who committed crimes in the U.S.

In 2015 Obama introduced the Family Case Management Program which, according to the fact sheet about the program, specifically prioritized "families with certain vulnerabilities, including pregnant or nursing family member; those with very young children; family members with medical/mental health concerns; families who speak only indigenous languages; and other special needs" to offer an alternative to being held in detention centers while awaiting the court to process their asylum claims, which often takes years.

In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Flores v. Lynch that detained immigrant children should be released as quickly as possible, but that parents were not required to be freed. The Obama administration complied by releasing women and children after detaining them together for 21 days.

When the Trump administration began separating families, pro-Trump pundits argued that the administration was implementing the same policy as the Obama administration. According to PolitiFact, the assertion that Trump was implementing the same policy as Obama is "false", noting "Obama's immigration policy specifically sought to avoid breaking up families. While some children were separated from their parents under Obama, this was relatively rare and families were quickly reunited even if that meant the release of a parent from detention." The Obama Administration did consider separating families, but decided against it.

Trump administration

Presidential candidate Donald Trump said ending what he called the Obama administration's policy of "catch and release" was the second of his two priorities for immigration reform, after walling off Mexico.

2017

Two weeks after President Trump was inaugurated, the administration reviewed the idea of separating immigrant children from their mothers as a way to deter asylum-seekers. In January 2017, the American Immigration Council and five other advocacy organizations filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties protesting the "systemic denial of entry to asylum seekers". It is not legal for the US to deny anyone the right to seek asylum. Nonetheless, according to advocacy lawyers, asylum seekers presenting at border crossings were denied for a variety of reasons, including "the daily quota has been reached," that they needed to present a visa, or that they needed to schedule an appointment through Mexican authorities, none of which are accurate. One nonprofit organization spokesperson commented, "We've basically arrived at a place where applying for asylum is not available to most people."

In March 2017, it was first reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was considering a proposal to separate parents from their children if they were caught attempting to cross the border into the United States. John Kelly, then Secretary of Homeland Security, confirmed that the policy was under consideration, but later denied it. Speaking on Democracy Now! the director of the National Immigration Law Center said that the policy, if implemented, would amount "to state-sanctioned violence against children, against families that are coming to the United States to seek safety" and that the administration did not act with transparency in explaining what was being proposed.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a statement to address media reports of the plan:

Federal authorities must exercise caution to ensure that the emotional and physical stress children experience as they seek refuge in the United States is not exacerbated by the additional trauma of being separated from their siblings, parents or other relatives and caregivers. Proposals to separate children from their families as a tool of law enforcement to deter immigration are harsh and counterproductive. We urge policymakers to always be mindful that these are vulnerable, scared children.

The AAP offered to assist Homeland Security in "crafting immigration procedures that protect children".

The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights at the University of Chicago Law School reported that, "As early as late spring of 2017 … we have seen a significant number of children referred to us for the appointment of a child advocate for kids taken from their parents at the border." The ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration charging that the administration was illegally separating children from their parents while the parents awaited asylum proceedings.

In April, the DHS said they were no longer considering the policy partly due to the steep decline in mothers attempting to travel to the U.S. with their children. Then, also in April, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered an escalation of federal prosecutions. Within five months, hundreds of children were reported to have been separated from their parents. Saying it would save $12 million a year, in June the Trump administration ended the Family Case Management Program, which kept asylum-seeking mothers and their children out of detention. From July to November 2017, the Department of Homeland Security ran a pilot test of its "zero tolerance" policy for parents in the El Paso sector of the Mexican border. According to internal documents of the Border Patrol, 91% of the parents whose children had been forcibly taken away were being charged only with a misdemeanor.

By December, after a new surge in families crossing the southern border, the DHS was again considering the policy to separate children from parents.

2018

In January, following testimony from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen in which she refused to rule out implementing the proposed policy of the separation of parents from their children, more than 200 child welfare organizations released a letter calling for the Trump Administration to abandon plans to forcibly separate children from their parents at the U.S. border. The letter said, in part: "We know that this policy would have significant and long-lasting consequences for the safety, health, development, and well-being of children. Children need to be cared for by their parents to be safe and healthy, to grow and develop. Forced separation disrupts the parent-child relationship and puts children at increased risk for both physical and mental illness. The Administration's plan would eviscerate the principle of family unity and put children in harm's way."

On April 6, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed federal prosecutors "to adopt immediately a zero-tolerance policy for all offenses" related to the misdemeanor of improper entry into the United States, and that this "zero-tolerance policy shall supersede any existing policies". This would aim to criminally convict first-time offenders when historically they would face civil and administrative removal, while criminal convictions were usually reserved for those who committed the felony of illegal re-entry after removal.

In late April 2018, the media reported that a review of government data found that about 700 migrant children, more than 100 of them under the age of 4, had been taken from their parents since October 2017. At that time Department of Homeland Security officials said they did not split families to deter immigration but rather to "protect the best interests of minor children crossing our borders".

On May 7, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced:

If you cross the border unlawfully ... then we will prosecute you. If you smuggle an illegal alien across the border, then we'll prosecute you. ... If you're smuggling a child, then we're going to prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you, probably, as required by law.

In June 2018, U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal from the 7th congressional district of the state of Washington spoke with women detainees at the SeaTac Federal Detention Center. Jayapal said women spoke of "fleeing threats of rape, gang violence and political persecution". She said more than half of the women were mothers who had been separated forcibly from their children, some as young as 12 months old, and said that many did not know where their children were being detained. Jayapal said, "Some of them heard their children screaming for them in the next room. Not a single one of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening."

Even before the policy was announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions on May 7, 2018, it began to attract significant criticism. In March 2017, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement to address media reports of the plan, saying that using separation of parents from their children as a tool of law enforcement was harmful to the children and not acceptable. In January 2018, more than 200 child welfare organizations released a letter calling for the Trump Administration to abandon plans to forcibly separate children from their parents, saying that separation will cause long-lasting untoward effects on the children. Following the May announcement, dozens of protest demonstrations were held, attracting thousands. In June, dozens of protest demonstrations were held, attracting thousands. In Washington, D.C., Democratic members of Congress marched in protest. Religious groups and figures have voiced opposition to the policy, including Pope Francis, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the Southern Baptist Convention. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights called for the Trump administration to "immediately halt" its policy of separating children from their parents, and human rights activists have criticized that the policy, insofar as it is also applied to asylum seekers, defies Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.

The policy is notably unpopular, more so than any other major bill or executive action in recent memory. Poll aggregates show that approximately 25% of Americans supported the policy, although a majority of Republicans supported it.

Multiple media accounts, as well as direct testimony from detained migrants to members of Congress, report that immigrant families presenting themselves at ports of entry seeking asylum have also been separated. Speaking on Face the Nation on June 17, Senator Susan Collins said that the Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen had testified before the Senate that asylum seekers with families would not be separated if they presented themselves at a legal port of entry. Collins added, "Yet, there are numerous credible media accounts showing that exactly that is happening, and the administration needs to put an end to that right off." Later in the day Nielsen tweeted: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period."

Despite previously asserting that "You can't [reverse the policy] through an executive order," on June 20, 2018, Trump bowed to intense political pressure and signed an executive order to reverse the policy while still maintaining "zero tolerance" border control by detaining entire families together. Asked by a reporter why he had taken so long to sign the order, Trump falsely asserted, "It's been going on for 60 years. Sixty years. Nobody has taken care of it. Nobody has had the political courage to take care of it. But we're going to take care of it."

Motivation

In February 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asylum chief John Lafferty told DHS employees that the Trump administration was "in the process of reviewing" several policies aimed at lowering the number of asylum seekers to the United States, which included the idea of separating migrant mothers and children.

Speaking on NPR in May 2018, White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly described the policy as "a tough deterrent [and] a much faster turnaround on asylum seekers". When questioned if it might be considered "cruel and heartless" to remove children from their mothers, Kelly replied, "I wouldn't put it quite that way. The children will be taken care of—put into foster care or whatever."

In June 2018, Attorney General Sessions said, "If people don't want to be separated from their children, they should not bring them with them. We've got to get this message out. You're not given immunity." White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller said: "It was a simple decision by the administration to have a zero tolerance policy for illegal entry, period. The message is that no one is exempt from immigration law."

The Washington Post quoted a White House official as saying that Trump's decision to enforce the current immigration law is to "force people to the table" to negotiate on laws in Congress. Meanwhile, Trump tweeted: "Any Immigration Bill MUST HAVE full funding for the Wall, end Catch & Release, Visa Lottery and Chain, and go to Merit Based Immigration." [sic]

Process

File:Directions to find kids.jpg

Department of Homeland Security handout given to parents whose children are detained

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains families suspected of illegally crossing the border, or in some cases families applying for asylum. Prior to 2018, most suspected illegal border-crossers were dealt with through civil proceedings in immigration courts, where deportation proceedings and asylum hearings take place; most who were criminally prosecuted in federal court "either had been apprehended at least twice before, or had committed a serious crime". Under the Trump administration's new "zero-tolerance" policy, the Department of Justice is criminally prosecuting all suspected illegal border-crossers for illegal entry, even those who crossed for the first time. Families undergo separations when parents or adult relatives are charged with unlawful entry.

Parents are held in Federal jails prior to trial. The government conducts expedited, mass trials of alleged border crossers under Operation Streamline. According to The New York Times, "Lawyers receive the roster of clients assigned to them on the morning of the hearing and meet with each one for about 20 minutes to explain the charges and the process in Spanish." People who plead guilty are typically sentenced to time served in jail, while repeat offenders may be sentenced to 30 to 75 days in jail. Once convicted, they are eligible for deportation. Due to a Trump executive order, DHS no longer prioritizes deporting those convicted of more dangerous crimes. They are then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.

Children are held temporarily by the DHS before being transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ORR contracts the operation of around 100 facilities for child migrants to companies and nonprofit organizations. The Flores settlement requires that ORR hold children no longer than 20 days before releasing them. As of June 2018, migrant children are held an average of 51 days before being released to sponsors or foster parents. ORR must prioritize placing children with relatives in the United States, regardless of their immigration status. About 85% of children are eventually placed with a family member, while others are placed with unrelated foster parents.

Children are being transferred into foster care placements across the country. The fifty children placed in western Michigan include infants of 8 and 11 months, and have an average age of 8. Children are flown to Michigan during the overnight hours, and foster care officials report they have not been told where they are going. Officials also report that children have been waiting as long as 30 days to speak to their parents, due to difficulties locating them.

According to the legal support organization KIND, in at least six cases including that of a two-year-old girl, parents being deported have not been reunited with their children, who remain the United States.

According to a June 2018 analysis by USA Today, in most cases migrants are bused from the immigration holding facility to federal court where they plead guilty to having entered the country illegally, a misdemeanor, and are sentenced to whatever time they have already spent in the government’s custody and a $10 fine. They are then bused back to the holding facility to be processed for deportation. If they have children, upon their return they may find that their children are gone.

Impact

In the past, most migrants illegally crossing the border came almost entirely from Mexico; however, the current influx now includes greater numbers of women and children fleeing violence, gang recruitment, and sexual trafficking in the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Rather than illegally crossing into the US, they are presenting themselves at the border hoping to claim asylum, which they are legally entitled to do.

In June, U.S. Representative Pramila Jayapal spoke with recently arrived detainees at the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac facility located near Seattle. The facility houses 206 immigrants, 174 of them are women. Many of the women spoke of "fleeing threats of rape, gang violence and political persecution". She said more than half of the women were mothers who had forcibly been separated from their children, some as young as 12 months old, and said that many did not know where their children were being detained. Commenting on her visit of the facility, Jayapal called the women's stories "heartbreaking", saying, "I've been doing immigration-rights work for almost two decades. I am not new to these stories. I will tell you there was not a dry eye in the house. ... Some of them heard their children screaming for them in the next room. Not a single one of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening."

Number of children

The number of immigrant children in custody surged following the implementation of the policy. The Department of Health and Human Services reported on May 29 "that it had 10,773 migrant children in its custody, up from 8,886 on April 29". According to Congressional testimony given by an official for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, "638 adults were referred for prosecution between May 6 and May 19 under the new zero-tolerance effort and they brought 658 children with them."

The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on June 15 that 1,995 immigrant children were separated from their parents during the six weeks from April 19 and May 31. This figure does not include children of families that asked for asylum at an official border crossing and were then separated. Speaking on Face the Nation on June 17, Senator Susan Collins suggested that the number may well be higher.

Steven Wagner, the Acting Assistant Secretary for the Administration for Children and Families under HHS, was unable to say in June 2018 how many separated children had been placed with sponsors or reunited with their parents. But that the department is "under a legal obligation" to place children quickly with a sponsor, however, "we actually don't have a time limit in terms of days" that the children are allowed to stay in HHS care. However, on June 21 a Homeland Security Official stated about 500 children have been reunited with their families since May 2018.

Fiscal costs and diversion of resources

The costs of separating migrant children from their parents and keeping them in "tent cities" are higher than keeping them with their parents in detention centers. It costs $775 per person per night to house the children when they are separated but $256 per person per night when they are held in permanent HHS facilities and $298 per person per night to keep the children with their parents in ICE detention centers.

To handle the large amount of immigration charges brought by the Trump administration, federal prosecutors had to divert resources from other crime cases. The head of the Justice Department's major crimes unit in San Diego diverted staff from drug smuggling cases. Drug smuggling cases were also increasingly pursued in state courts rather than federal courts, as federal prosecutor were increasingly preoccupied with pursuing charges against illegal border crossings. The Kaiser Family Foundation said that costs associated with the policy may also divert resources from programs within within the Department of Health and Human Services.

It was reported in June 2018, that the Trump administration plans to pay a Texas Non-Profit Southwest Key Programs Inc, more than $458 million in the fiscal year of 2018 to care for immigrant children detained crossing the US border illegally.

ProPublica audio tape

On June 18, 2018, as reporters waited for a briefing by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, ProPublica posted a recording of crying children begging for their parents just after being separated from them, which the reporters listened to as they waited for her to speak. Nielsen arrived and spoke, blaming Congress for the administration's policy of separating parents from their children and saying that there would be no change in policy until Congress rewrote the nation's immigration laws. At one point during the briefing, New York magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi played the tape. Nielsen refused to answer any questions about the material in the tape, such as "How is this not child abuse?"

Most of the tape consists of children crying and wailing for their parents, but a six-year-old girl is heard to repeatedly beg that her aunt be called, who she is certain will come and pick her up. ProPublica was able to contact the aunt, however the aunt was unable to assist for fear that her own petition of asylum would be put in jeopardy due to the recent Trump Administration decision to discontinue asylum protections for victims of gang and domestic violence. The aunt said that she was able to keep in touch with her niece by phone and that she had talked to her sister; however, her sister had not yet been allowed to speak with her child. The aunt said that the authorities had told the child that her mother may be deported without her.

Health

Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris described the family separation policy as "a recipe for toxic stress". Yoka Verdoner, a child survivor of the Holocaust, a retired teacher and psychotherapist now living in California wrote in The Guardian about the life-long trauma that she and her siblings had to endure when Nazis separated them from their parents. Robert Wilonsky, City Columnist of Dallas News, wrote about a holocaust survivor Max Glauben, who sees his reflection in the faces of the children separated from their parents. Max Glauben said, "If you go through horror, even 70 years later, you get flashbacks." The holocaust survivor and co-founder of Dallas Holocaust Museum added, "It's an indescribable feeling. Pain cannot be duplicated. But feelings and emotions can be."

According to several defense lawyers working with the immigrants, in many cases the Border Patrol agents lie to the parents in order to get them to let go of their kids, telling them that the children are being taken for questioning or "to be given a bath".

In May 2018, a Honduran man committed suicide after his 3-year-old son was forcibly taken and separated from him by Border Patrol Agents. The man had crossed the Rio Grande with his son and his wife and turned himself and his family in to authorities to ask for asylum.

Allegations of forced medication

There are concerns that the facilities that children were held in may have in the past been associated with the forcible drugging of children. The Texas Tribune reported that detained children who had previously been held at the Shiloh Treatment Center said they had been forcibly treated with antipsychotic drugs by the facility personnel, based on legal filings from a class action lawsuit. According to the filings, the drugs made the children listless, dizzy and incapacitated, and in some cases unable to walk. According to a mother, after receiving the drug, her child repeatedly fell, hitting her head and eventually ending up in a wheel chair. Another child stated that she tried to open a window, at which point one of the supervisors hurled her against a door, choked her until she fainted and had a doctor forcibly administer an injection while she was being held down by two guards. A forensic psychiatrist consulted by the Tribune compared the practice to what "the old Soviet Union used to do".

The treatment center is one of the companies that have been investigated on charges of mistreating children, although the federal government continues to employ the private agency which runs it as a federal contractor.

Other legal

A Guatemalan woman filed a federal lawsuit in Washington challenging the Trump administration's practice on June 19, before the Executive Order. It is one of a small number of similar court challenges, with demands such as the immediate release of the child, an order prohibiting US authorities from separating the family, and money for damages of pain and suffering.

Facilities involved

During separation

• The Ursula detention facility, operated by Customs and Border Protection, in McAllen, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley—On June 17, the facility housed 1,129 people, including 528 families and nearly 200 unaccompanied minor children. The facility has been called, "the dog kennel" because chain link fencing is being used to create areas for those waiting to be processed, including children who have been separated from their parents. The caged areas are bare without toys or books for the children. Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley toured the facility in June and said that the parents were being told that they would only be separated from their children for "just a very short period—they go to a judge and then they’re reunified [but] the reality is it’s very hard for the parents to know where their kids are and to be able to connect with them.”

Detention of parents

• Port Isabel Detention Center, operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in Los Fresnos, Texas—This facility is surrounded by swampland and houses detained parents. Several members of Congress toured the facility in June and met with 10 women who had been separated from their children. Some of them did not know where their children had been transferred to and none had been able to speak with a lawyer. One women said that she was told that her child would be put up for adoption. Rhode Island Representative David Cicilline said the women "were sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably."

Detention of children

• Casa Padre, a private facility owned and operated by Southwest Key Programs, in Brownsville, Texas—A housing facility for children built in a former Walmart and operated under contract for the Department of Health and Human Services. On June 13, it housed 1,469 children, a plurality of whom arrived as unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Southwest Key estimated that 5% of children held there had been separated from their parents.
• Estrella del Norte, a private facility owned and operated by Southwest Key Programs, in Tucson, Arizona—A 300-bed housing facility for children, that housed 287 children in mid-June 2018. A former staff member described conditions in the facility as increasingly "prison-like", and recounts being told to forbid siblings without their parent from hugging one another.
• Tornillo Port of Entry detention camp, operated by the Federal government in Tornillo, Texas—A so-called Tornillo tent city erected in the desert at the Marcelino Serna Port of Entry in western Texas. The site was chosen for a tent camp slated to house thousands of migrant children, including both unaccompanied minors and children separated from their parents. Representative Beto O'Rourke, who led a protest on Father's Day, June 17, 2018, was told that 200 children were being detained in the camp, 20% of whom were separated from their parents.
• Three facilities in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville (Casa El President, operated by Southwest Key), in southern Texas, have been set up to hold children under five and have been referred to as "tender age shelters". Medical professionals and lawyers who visited the facilities described "play rooms" filled with preschool children crying and in crisis. Colleen Kraft, the president of American Academy of Pediatrics, visited the Coombs facility and said she was "shaken" by what she saw, calling it "a heartbreaking scene" and unlike anything she'd seen in her decades as a pediatrician. She termed the practice of removing the children from their parents "government-sanctioned child abuse".
• Upbring New Hope Children’s Shelter in McAllen, Texas—Fifty-five children are housed in this facility, including at least six who have been separated from their parents. On June 21, First Lady Melania Trump visited this facility for 75 minutes wearing a jacket that on the back stated "I Really Don't Care, Do U" which was criticized by the media for conveying a message of apathy.
• An East Harlem, New York shelter run by Cayuga Centers, Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and additional shelters in Long Island, in Westchester and the Bronx are among nine facilities in New York state housing separated children.

Proposed facilities

• Houston facility for young children, pregnant girls, and teenage mothers—Southwest Key has leased a 53,600-square-foot building—419 Emancipation Avenue—formerly occupied by the non-profit Star of Hope in Houston, Texas, and applied to use it as a detention center for up to 200 migrant youth "from age 0 to 17". Advocates report that the facility would house "children younger than 12 as well as pregnant and nursing teenagers"; the Department of Health and Human Services refers to this younger age group as "tender-age children" Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner opposes the facility and has urged the Texas state government not to license it. At a press conference, Turner said, "I do not want to be an enabler in this process. I do not want the city to participate in this process. The health department has yet to provide a food permit or shelter permit. … If we don't speak, if we don't say no, then these types of policies will continue."

Lack of efforts to reunite families

A flyer circulated by the Department of Homeland Security in 2018 offering assistance to parents separated from their children while in custody.

Authorities made the decision to take children from their parents without a plan to reunite families, resulting in numerous cases of parents and children having no contact since being forcefully separated. One investigation reported that "The policy is being applied in such an opaque and ad hoc manner that government case workers, public defenders, federal prosecutors, judges, and the Border Patrol do not have clear answers about if, when, or where children will be reunited with their parents, or even whether separated parents are able to communicate with their kids by phone." When asked if separated parents will "just fall into a black hole" and be unable to reunite with their children unless they hire a lawyer, a Justice Department official replied that once the parent is in ICE custody, the child is taken into the Health and Human Services system, and the government does not try to reunite them.

If or when an attempt is made to reconnect children to their parents it will be difficult because children and parents enter two separate systems: parents enter the US Department of Homeland Security and face criminal prosecution while children are classified as an "unaccompanied alien child" and transferred to the US Department of Health and Human Services. At that point the government no longer tracks them as a family unit and there is no system in place to reunite families. In May, parents in the McAllen facility were given a number to call to locate their children, but it was the wrong number, and no phones were available for their use. A federal public defender working at the facility spoke to a judge asking that the families be reunited saying, "This is a tragedy that's happening right before this court. There's a very real possibility the parent will be deported without their children." John Sandweg, the former head of ICE, agreed saying, "You could easily end up in a situation where the gap between a parent's deportation and a child's deportation is years," and that many children might never see their parents again.

Representative Pramila Jayapal met with dozens of mothers whose children have been taken away from them, and reported that in some cases, Border Patrol agents told the mothers that "their families don't exist anymore." The Boston Globe interviewed foster parents in Michigan who were caring for four children that had been taken from their parents; a six-year-old boy, two eight-year-old girls, and a nine-year-old boy. Only one of the children, the six-year-old, knew where his parent was. The boy and his father, from Honduras, had crossed the border six months previously in an attempt to claim asylum, and he had not seen him since he had been led away in handcuffs.

A journalist working for The New Yorker spoke with several women incarcerated at the Otero County Prison, a privately run facility in New Mexico, and an attorney who is representing them. One mother tearfully said that she has no idea where her child might be and she is concerned that his medical conditions are not being attended to. Another mother said that of the fifty mothers in her wing at Otero few knew where there children were. The public defender representing these mothers said, “The family-separation policy is changing the lawyer-client relationship. My clients don’t even care about beating the charge they’re facing. It makes it harder to represent them, because all they want is to be with their children. There can’t really be due process for a parent in a situation like this.”

Reactions

Opposition and condemnation

The policy attracted significant condemnation from a wide array of sources including medical, scientific, religious and human rights groups. It is extremely unpopular with the public, with approximately 25% of Americans supporting the policy, less than any recent major piece of legislation.

Medical and scientific community

The policy has been condemned by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians and the American Psychiatric Association. Together, they represent more than 250,000 doctors in the United States. Dr. Irwin Redlener, who co-founded Children's Health Fund, called the policy "dehumanizing" and described it as a form of child abuse. A number of concerned researchers and clinicians signed an open letter to Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen calling on her to end the migrant child separations, writing, "Decades of psychological and brain research have demonstrated that forced parental separation and placement in incarceration-like facilities can have profound immediate, long-term, and irreparable harm on infant and child development."

Academia

Many professors and administrators in colleges and universities have likened the policy to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Open letters signed by various scholars denounced the policy and called for its halt.

Religious groups

United Methodist Church logo

Many religious groups also oppose the policy including many Christian organizations such as:

• The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• The National Association of Evangelicals
• The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
• Episcopal Church
• United Methodist Church
• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• Presbyterian Church
• Evangelical Lutheran Church

On June 18, a group of more than 600 United Methodist Church clergy and laity announced that they were bringing church law charges against Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The members of the group accused Sessions of "child abuse, immorality, racial discrimination and dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of the doctrine of the United Methodist Church". The last charge refers to Sessions' "misuse" of Romans 13, which he quoted to argue that secular law must always be obeyed.

All four major denominations of American Judaism oppose the policy:

• Reform
• Conservative
• Orthodox
• Reconstructionist

Islamic organizations also oppose the policy.

Pope Francis supports statements by US Catholic Bishops who had called the policy "contrary to our Catholic values" and "immoral", adding "It's not easy, but populism is not the solution."

Evangelist Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, called the practice "disgraceful" and said that "it's terrible to see families ripped apart and I don't support that one bit." Graham did not, however, attach blame to President Trump or his administration, but rather blamed "...the politicians for the last 20, 30 years that have allowed this to escalate to where it is today".

Civil rights and humanitarian groups

A large number of civil rights groups, humanitarian organizations, and other groups condemned the family separation policy, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, the League of Women Voters of the United States, the International Rescue Committee, the NAACP, and the National Immigration Law Center.

The Tahirih Justice Center has criticized that the policy of charging asylum seekers with a criminal offense, and subsequent separation of families, is contrary to Article 31 of the Refugee Convention. This Article prohibits any party to the Convention from imposing penalties on asylum seekers on account of their illegal entry or presence, provided the asylum seekers present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.

The director for the Americas at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, Erika Guevara Rosas, has stated that the "severe mental suffering that officials have intentionally inflicted on these families for coercive purposes, means that these acts meet the definitions of torture under both US and international law."

Congress

Forty Democratic United States Senators sent a letter to President Trump urging him to "rescind this unethical, ineffective, and inhumane policy and instead prioritize approaches that align with our humanitarian and American values." In response to the policy, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill, Keep Families Together Act (S. 3036), under which the separation of a child from its parents would only be allowed under very specific conditions. By June 18, the entire Democratic caucus of 49 senators (including the two independents who caucus with the Democrats) had signed on as cosponsors.

Republicans in Congress fell into four groups on the child-separation policy:

• The vast majority of Republicans in Congress kept silent on the policy, seeking to avoid a confrontation with Trump.
• Other congressional Republicans, such as Representative Steve King of Iowa, supported separating families.
• Some congressional Republicans, such as Senator Dean Heller of Nevada and Representative Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, expressed disagreement with the policy but avoid strongly criticizing Trump.
• Another group of congressional Republicans were strongly critical of the policy, including members who are frequent Trump critics (for example, Senators Jeff Flake, John McCain, Ben Sasse, and Susan Collins), but also some who are usually aligned with Trump (for example, Senator Orrin Hatch).

Republican Senator Ted Cruz initially defended the policy in an June 11 interview. On June 18, despite his previous support of the policy, Cruz announced that he would introduce his own legislation, criticizing the Democrats' bill as "returning to the failed policy of 'catch and release'". Cruz stated that his bill would end the separation policy by authorizing the construction of shelters to house families, expedite asylum cases, and increase the number of federal immigration judges. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer criticized Cruz's proposal, arguing that the Republicans would include "unacceptable additions" and instead urged Trump to end the policy using an executive order.

Governors

In early 2018, Trump requested that state governors send National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. In response to the family-separation policy, at least eight governors either recalled National Guard troops from the U.S.-Mexico border or declined to send them to the border. States that withdrew troops, reversed plans to send troops, or declined to send troops were New York, North Carolina, Virginia, Colorado, Delaware, and Rhode Island (which have Democratic governors) and Maryland and Massachusetts (which have Republican governors). Democratic Governor John Carney of Delaware, for example, said "Under normal circumstances, we wouldn't hesitate to answer the call. But given what we know about the policies currently in effect at the border, I can't in good conscience send Delawareans to help with that mission." (Some additional states—Vermont and Oregon—had declined Trump's request before the family-separation policy had been implemented.)

Among Republican governors, some supported Trump's policy of separating families (Phil Bryant of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina), while others opposed the policy (Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Bruce Rauner of Illinois).

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

The policy has also been condemned by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. High Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called it an "unconscionable" effort by a state to deter parents by abusing children.

United Nations special rapporteurs from the Human Rights Council have also condemned the policy, and have stated that detention of children "is punitive, severely hampers their development, and in some cases may amount to torture." The rapporteurs have called its rescission insufficient.

Others

All four living former First Ladies of the United States—Rosalynn Carter, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama—condemned the policy of separating children from their parents. First Lady Melania Trump's office issued a statement saying, "[Mrs. Trump] believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart."

A bipartisan group of 75 former U.S. attorneys published an open letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, calling for an end to the policy, writing that the policy inflicts "unnecessary trauma and suffering of innocent children" and "is a radical departure from previous Justice Department policy" that "is dangerous, expensive, and inconsistent with the values of the institution in which we served." The former U.S. attorneys also pointed out that the policy is not required by law.

Fox News commentator Andrew Napolitano has criticised the policy, stating that he believes that "it is child abuse to separate children from their parents unless it's necessary to save a human life ... there's a federal statute that says you can't separate them more than 72 hours."

At least five governors including Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker canceled or recalled US National Guard troop deployments at the US-Mexico border in protest of family separations. Other governors including John Kasich of Ohio and Andrew Cuomo of New York criticized the administration's policy.

Family separations were widely condemned in the business community, including by conservative groupings like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable.

On June 20, three airlines – American Airlines, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines – each issued a statement requesting the federal government not to use their planes to transport migrant children who were taken from their parents. The previous day, a veteran flight attendant for a major airline recounted an episode in which an ICE agent initially told another flight attendant that the migrant children on their flight were members of a soccer team, but "when pressed, the agent finally admitted that they were, indeed children who were being relocated to assigned camps."

Protests

Main article: Protests against Trump administration family separation policy

Fundraising response

Inspired by the viral photo of a crying two-year-old girl looking up at her mother, on June 16, 2018, a California couple started a fund-raising campaign on Facebook named "Reunite an immigrant parent with their child" with a goal of raising $1,500. As of June 20, more than $17 million had been raised. The money will go to the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, and provide legal aid for immigrant parents who have been arrested at the border.

The photograph was taken by a professional photographer, John Moore, just after the mother was asked to set her child down to be body-searched before boarding the Border Patrol van and the little girl began to cry. The mother is from Honduras and had been traveling for a month.

The photo has raised controversy after the father of the child said in an interview that the mother and daughter were now being detained together in McAllen, Texas. This has caused many in Trumps administration to rally against "fake news" with White House Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders tweeting that the Democrats and media "exploited this photo of a little girl to push their own agenda."

Public opinion

The family-separation policy is unpopular among Americans, as shown by four polls; on average, two-thirds of Americans oppose the policy. There is a strong partisan divide; the average of polls showed that Democrats are overwhelmingly opposed to the policy (8% support, 87% oppose, 5% other) while a plurality of Republicans favor it (49% support, 35% oppose, 16% other).

White House

According to a report by Gabriel Sherman, the policy caused "chaos" and infighting among the White House staff and advisers. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was "frustrated" according to one of her friends. On the other hand, according to one White House adviser, Stephen Miller "actually enjoys seeing those pictures at the border", referring to the photographs of children separated from their parents. The adviser also commented that Miller "is a twisted guy, the way he was raised and picked on. There's always been a way he's gone about this. He's Waffen-SS."

Support

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Senator Chuck Grassley, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and commentator Ben Shapiro have asserted that the Trump administration are required to separate migrant families due to the 1997 Flores settlement, which requires that unaccompanied minors be released to their parents or relatives, and if a relative cannot be found then a government agency can appoint an appropriate guardian for the child. Trump administration officials also cited the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA), a 2008 anti-human trafficking statute, as a justification for the policy. Neither the Flores settlement nor the TVPRA, however, require or recommend family separations.

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter on June 17 dismissed immigrant children as "child actors weeping and crying" and urged Trump not to "fall for it".

Fox News television host Laura Ingraham on June 18 described the facilities where migrant children were housed as "essentially summer camps". She described criticism of the immigration policies as "faux liberal outrage". Also on June 18, Shapiro pointed to the 2016 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Flores v. Lynch, which he said "meant that the government either had to release whole families, or that the government had to separate parents from children".

Trump administration response

On June 19, 2018, a factchecker for The Washington Post critiqued a number of statements by Trump and members of his administration, characterizing them as "Orwellian stuff" and designating them as Four Pinocchios — the Post's highest rating of falsehood.

A day later, The Washington Post reported that members of the Trump administration had offered at least 14 contradictory statements regarding family separations. They disagreed on whether it was a Justice Department policy, on whether separations are a deterrent, on whether there was a prepared process to separate families, and on whether separations are required by law. Trump has also said that he could not reverse his administration's policy via executive order, while later writing an executive order to address the issue.

President Trump

President Trump said in response to the situation: "I hate to see separation of parents and children ... I hate the children being taken away." Trump has falsely blamed the Democrats for "that law" (also calling it "their law" and "the horrible law") on a number of occasions despite there being no law to mandate the separation of migrant parents and children. The Trump administration's own "zero tolerance" policy announced in April 6, 2018, is responsible for spurring the separations. Trump also said he "certainly wouldn't sign the more moderate" immigration bill proposed by leaders of the House of Representatives with input from moderate Republicans and the White House.

On June 20, 2018, Trump announced that he would sign an executive order to end family separations, saying "We're going to keep families together but we still have to maintain toughness or our country will be overrun by people, by crime." He did so later the same day.

On June 22, 2018, the President sent a tweet recommending Republicans to wait until after the November midterm elections to pass immigration legislation. He also tweeted "We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief...Obama and others had the same pictures, and did nothing about it!"

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen

During a June 18, 2018, White House press conference, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen stated that during the first five months of fiscal 2018, there was a "314% increase in adults showing up with kids [posing as] a family unit. Those are traffickers, those are smugglers, that is MS-13, those are criminals, those are abusers." However, using DHS data, analysis by The Washington Post found that such groups constituted only 0.61% of "family units" apprehended at the border during that period.

In the same press conference she states "We now care for them...We have high standards. We give them meals. We give them education. We give them medical care. There's videos, there's TVs..." and claimed when asked about family separation that a "vast majority" of children held are unaccompanied minors. On July 19, Nielsen was heckled by protesters shouting "Shame! Shame!...If kids don't eat in peace, you don't eat in peace," as she ate in a Mexican restaurant.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions

Following Christian opposition to the policy, Sessions controversially defended it by citing the thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans in the New Testament, saying "I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order." Several commentators have noted that before the Civil War, Romans 13 was traditionally used by advocates of slavery to justify it, and to attack abolitionists.

On June 19, Sessions disputed claims by former CIA Director Michael Hayden that the separation of the immigrant families at the border was similar to what happened at the Auschwitz concentration camp. During the interview he claimed that the comparisons were inaccurate as the Nazis "were keeping the Jews from leaving the country". In the same interview, he stated that if the parents are deported the children return with them, but if the parents claim asylum and stay the children are put into the custody of Department of Health and Human Services.

Executive Order to suspend new separations and detain families

See also: List of executive actions by Donald Trump § 2018

On June 20, 2018, President Trump signed an Executive Order titled "Affording Congress an Opportunity to Address Family Separation", that restricts family separation but maintains many of the key components of the Administration's immigration policy. The Order instructs the Department of Homeland Security to maintain custody of parents and children jointly, "to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations". It also instructs the Justice Department to attempt to overturn the Flores Agreement, which limited the time for holding children and families with children to 20 days, allowing children to be detained indefinitely. The order directs other agencies, including the Pentagon to create or procure spaces to house the family units, however the family unit will not be maintained if there is fear for the child's welfare.

At the signing ceremony, Trump said, "We're going to have strong, very strong borders but we are going to keep the families together. I didn't like the sight or the feeling of families being separated." Senator Kamala Harris criticized the order, saying that "This Executive Order doesn't fix the crisis. Indefinitely detaining children with their families in camps is inhumane and will not make us safe."

At least two senior aides claim that Republican Party leadership had no formal notice from the White House that there was planned executive action. The Chief Federal Public Defender in Southern Texas, Marjorie Meyers said that her official intially received no information about how the order would play out.

Continued detention of separated children

Following the issue of the Executive Order, the Department of Health and Human Services stated that the status of children already detained will not be affected by the Executive Order, and that they will not be immediately reunited with their families. However, it was later reported that the statement by Kenneth Wolfe, a spokesman for the Administration for Children and Families, that "there will be no grandfathering of existing cases" was based on incorrect information and no decision had been made.

Transition

The office of U.S. Attorney John Bash stated that the zero tolerance policy is still in effect. It spoke of "a necessary transition" during which those who were charged would no longer be transferred to the custody of US Marshals but would stay in the custody of the DHS together with their children. The office confirmed that several cases that had been pending when the executive order had been issued were dismissed as part of that transition.

Parents and children crossing the border illegally are intended to have the same A-file number given to them by immigration officials. Family reunification is complicated by the fact that in many cases families were separated before an A-file number was given, resulting in parents and children receiving different numbers. This makes it more difficult to reunite them afterwards. Days after the formal end of the policy, authorities still are not able to tell the separated children how their parents are doing, or where their parents are.

Preparations for new detention facilities

The June 20 Executive Order instructs that, "The Secretary of Defense shall take all legally available measures to provide to the Secretary, upon request, any existing facilities available for the housing and care of alien families, and shall construct such facilities if necessary and consistent with law." On June 21, the Department of Health and Human Services requested facilities to house migrant children. Pentagon spokesmen and a memorandum sent to Congress confirmed that the Department of Defense was preparing facilities at four military bases in Texas and Arkansas—Fort Bliss, Dyess Air Force Base, Goodfellow Air Force Base, and Little Rock Air Force Base—to house 20,000 "unaccompanied alien children."

Time Magazine reported the contents of an internal Navy planning memorandum that proposed constructing "tent cities" to house migrants in "temporary and austere" facilities at Navy Outlying Field Wolf in Orange Beach, Alabama, Navy Outlying Field Silverhill, and two abandoned airfields near Mobile, Alabama. The memorandum also proposes that up to 47,000 people could be house at either the currently-closed Concord Naval Weapons Station in northern California and/or Camp Pendleton in southern California.

See also

• Catch and release (immigration practice), a nickname for releasing detainees pending resolution of their status rather than keeping them in confinement
• Child abuse, the maltreatment of children
• Family detention, the holding of families together while detained
• Indefinite detention
• Internment, the imprisonment or confinement of people without a trial
• Occupy ICE, a protest movement
• Protests against Trump administration family separation policy
• Unaccompanied Alien Children