page_title: Trump administration family separation policy
hierarchical_section_title: Trump administration family separation policy
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo provided by Custom and Border Protection to reporter on tour of detention facility in McAllen, Texas. Reporters were not allowed to take their own photos
context_page_description: The Trump administration family separation policy was an aspect of US President Donald Trump's immigration policy. The policy was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Later investigations found that the practice of family separations had begun a year prior to the public announcement. Under the policy, federal authorities separated children from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails, and the children placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services. In January 2020 the SPLC reported that the official government number of children separated from their parents or guardians was 4,368, though it is likely that the accurate number is much higher.
  By early June 2018, it emerged that the policy did not include measures to reunite the families that it had separated. This created a child migration crisis.
context_section_description: The Trump administration family separation policy was an aspect of US President Donald Trump's immigration policy. The policy was presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach intended to deter illegal immigration and to encourage tougher legislation. It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018. Later investigations found that the practice of family separations had begun a year prior to the public announcement. Under the policy, federal authorities separated children from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US. The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails, and the children placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services.  In January 2020 the SPLC reported that the official government number of children separated from their parents or guardians was 4,368, though it is likely that the accurate number is much higher.
  By early June 2018, it emerged that the policy did not include measures to reunite the families that it had separated. This created a child migration crisis. Following national and international criticism, on June 20, 2018, President Trump signed an executive order ending family separations at the border. On June 26, 2018, US District Judge Dana Sabraw issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the family separation policy and ordered that all children be reunited with their parents within 30 days.  Two months later, in August, many parents and children remained separated.
  Since June 2018, despite the official end of the separation policy, hundreds of additional children have been separated from their parents. In March 2019, the government reported that since that time, 245 children had been removed from their families, in some cases without clear documentation undertaken to track them in order to reunite them with their parents. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform reported in July 2019 that over 700 children have been separated from their parents after the policy's official end. In July, it was reported that as many as five children per day were being separated, and by October, the total had reached 1,090.
  In January 2019, the administration acknowledged that thousands more children may have been separated from their families than the previously reported figure of 2,737, with officials uncertain of the exact number. Investigation showed that the child separation policy had actually begun in the summer of 2017, prior to the zero tolerance policy announced in April 2018. Federal officials said there were no plans to attempt to reunite these children because "it would destabilize the permanency of their existing home environment, and could be traumatic to the children." In May 2019, the administration acknowledged that at least an additional 1,712 migrant children may have been separated from their parents even before the "zero tolerance" policy was implemented.
  In June 2019, a group of attorneys who are involved with the Flores settlement visited a Border Patrol center in Clint, Texas. The children told the lawyers that meals consisted of instant oatmeal, a cookie and sweetened drink for breakfast, instant noodles for lunch, and a heated frozen burrito and a cookie for dinner. They said they had not had a clean change of clothing or a bath for weeks. There were no adult caretakers; girls as young as ten were taking care of the younger ones.
  In July 2019, the ACLU filed a lawsuit alleging more than 900 families, including children and babies, had been separated at the U.S.-Mexico border. In December 2019, a lawsuit was filed  alleging that since the family resettlement was ordered to end following the 2018 federal injunction, 1,100 children were taken from their parents after crossing the border. After cases of COVID-19 among minors in ORR custody were confirmed during the COVID-19 pandemic, two federal courts issued rulings mandating oversight of the facilities' preparedness for the pandemic.
caption: Young persons sitting within a cage in the Ursula detention facility in McAllen, Texas, dated June 2018
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