Trump administration family separation policy

The Trump administration family separation policy was the policy of separating children from parents who crossed the United States border illegally in 2017 and 2018. The goal of the policy was to prevent illegal immigration by making parents not want to cross the border with children. Immigration is the process of a person going from one country to live in another country. The children and parents were put in separate facilities under the care of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some families legally applying for asylum were also separated. The adults were often held in jails or forced to leave the United States. The policy caused many children, some under one year old, to be taken away from their parents, and some of the children are still not with their parents. Some children spent three weeks or more in crowded facilities, where they had little food, no clean clothes or baths and no adult to take care of them; girls as young as ten were taking care of younger children.

Family separations began in the summer of 2017 in Arizona and Texas. The policy was expanded to all of the US–Mexico border in 2018. Family separation continued for at least eighteen months after the policy's official end, with about 1,100 families separated between June 2018 and the end of 2019. In total, more than 5,500 children were separated from their families.

At first, the Trump administration did not make plans to give the children back to their parents. Scott Lloyd, the person in charge of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, told the people working for him not to keep a list of children who had been separated from their parents. Matthew Albence, a top official for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the people he worked with that they should prevent children from being given back to their parents. On June 20, 2018, Donald Trump signed an executive order ending family separations at the border. On June 26, 2018, US District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered all children to be given back to their parents in thirty days. In 2019, NBC News reported that the Trump administration had said that they would give back thousands of children to their parents, but they only gave back sixty children to their parents. The administration did not give any money to help children go back to their parents, so volunteer organizations gave money. The policy was ended in 2018 but many families are still separated. Up to 2,000 children are still separated from their parents in 2024.
 History 

 Previous U.S. policy 
Before the Trump administration, the United States did not usually separate migrant parents from their children.

After the 2014 American immigration crisis, president Barack Obama asked officials to make new immigration policies. A policy to separate families was first proposed by ICE official Thomas Homan in 2014, but his idea was rejected.

In 2016, the Obama administration made new rules that took into account the interests of parents and focused on detaining immigrants who had earlier committed crimes in the United States.  Children were kept in cells, separated by age and gender, while places were found for them to stay. Supporters of Donald Trump would later claim that his family separation policy was like policies under the Obama administration, but many people disagree with that idea.

 Trump administration 
While running for president in 2016, Donald Trump said he would end "catch and release" . After becoming President in January 2017, Trump replaced Daniel Ragsdale as director of ICE and with Thomas Homan, who said it was a good idea to separate children from their families to prevent people from wanting to illegally immigrate . Trump's adviser Stephen Miller also said it was a good idea to separate families. 

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 Initial proposals 
Two weeks after Trump was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017, the administration thought about the idea of separating immigrant children from their mothers. In March 2017, it was first reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was considering a proposal to separate parents from their children.

After  April 5, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered an escalation of federal prosecutions. Parents were being charged with crimes and jailed while their children were taken away and placed under DHS care. Within five months, hundreds of children were    separated from their parents. In late April 2018, 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 prevent immigration but  to "protect the best interests of minor children crossing our borders". In June the Trump administration ended the Family Case Management Program, which kept asylum-seeking mothers and their children out of detention.

 DHS  programs in Yuma and El Paso (2017) 
Beginning in May 2017, the Trump administration told U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Yuma, Arizona area to start prosecuting first-time border crossers and separating migrant parents from their children, including children as young as ten months old.Kevin Sieff, The Trump administration used an early, unreported program to separate migrant families along a remote stretch of the border , Washington Post (July 9, 2021). From July 1 to December 31, 2017, 234 families were separated in the Yuma area. An additional, unknown number of families were likely separated in May and June 2017. These family separations were not publicly reported at the time. Some families separated by U.S. officials in the Yuma area remained apart from their children in 2021, four years later, and some separated family members were deported  and could not be found.

A separate family-separation program was run in the El Paso, Texas, Border Patrol area.Kevin Sieff, The Trump administration used an early, unreported program to separate migrant families along a remote stretch of the border , Washington Post (July 9, 2021). From May to October 2017, families were separated, including families that were seeking asylum, and children were brought to shelters with no system created to  bring them back to their parents.

According to an April 2018 memo seen  by The Washington Post, the government saw the El Paso test as successful "Unaccompanied Children: Agency Efforts to Identify and Reunify Children Separated from Parents at the Border" , GAO (February 7, 2019). Then ICE, CBP, and CIS started the zero-tolerance program across all of the Southwest border in April.

 Administration issues "zero-tolerance" policy 
On April 6, 2018, Attorney General Jeff Sessions told officials to have a "zero-tolerance policy" and prosecute every person who tried to cross the border illegally. This was a change from in the past, when people were usually not prosecuted unless they tried to cross the border illegally two or more times.



Families trying to cross the border illegally were separated and immigrant families who were trying to enter the United States as asylum seekers were also being separated. 

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Many Americans did not like the policy. Many protest demonstrations were held, attracting thousands including, Democratic members of Congress The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights asked  the Trump administration to change the policy and human rights activists criticized  the policy.

 Zero-tolerance policy reversed 
On June 20, 2018, Donald Trump signed an executive order to end the family separation policy. 

 Continued separations 
On April 9, 2019. Donald Trump said "President Obama had child separation. Take a look—the press knows it, you know it, we all know it. I'm the one that stopped it." The Obama separation policy was used only to keep a child safe  or when the adult was a found to be a criminal.

 Places where people were held 

 ICE facilities 
In June 2019, a group of people visited a Border Patrol center in Clint, Texas. The facility had 250 children including a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds, a 3-year-old and "dozens more under 12". They said that "kids are taking care of kids, and there's inadequate food, water and sanitation". They reported that the children weren't sleeping in beds but on the concrete floor with only foil blankets. Soap and toothbrushes were not given to them. The children were given only 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 clean clothing or a bath for weeks. There were no adults taking care of them, ten and fourteen year old girls were taking care of the younger ones. A 14-year-old girl from Guatemala who had been holding two little girls in her lap told them, "I need comfort, too. I am bigger than they are, but I am a child, too."

On July 1, 2019,  people from the U.S. Congress visited migrant detention centers in Texas. They said the people there were not allowed to take showers They said that fifteen women in their 50s and 60s were sleeping in a small concrete room with no running water and weeks without showers. They had all been separated from their families. Representative Lori Trahan said she saw women "sobbing in a crowded cell because they were separated from their kids". Others said that the Border Patrol had told women to drink out of a toilet for water. They said that between 15 and 20 mothers were held for more than fifty days, some  separated from their children.

Between January 2017 and April 2020, 39 adults died in ICE facilities or after being released. 

 HHS facilities 
In 2019, people who worked for the Trump Administration said  that separated children were afraid and felt that they were left alone by their parents. Some children cried a lot and could not stop crying, even when other people tried to comfort them.

 Process 
Some people helping the immigrants said that  Border Patrol agents lied to the parents to get them to let go of their kids, telling them that the children were being taken to ask them questions or for a bath. They also would take  children when the parent was away in jail.  

After being taken from their parents, the children were given to other families in many parts of the United States. Fifty children  were given to families in Michigan, including babies who were 8 and 11 months old. 

Some parents were taken by bus to court and when they got back they found that their children were gone.

In June 2018, a person from the U.S. Congress said more than half of the 174 women at one facility were mothers who had  been separated from their children, some as young as twelve months old, and many did not know where their children were. She said that none of them had been allowed to say goodbye or explain to them what was happening. 

 Detention of children 
In October 2020, The New York Times reported that more than 5,500 children in total had been separated from their parents at the U.S. border under the Trump administration.

 ProPublica audio tape 
thumbtime=2|thumb|ProPublica recording of crying children separated from their families
On June 18, 2018, ProPublica posted a recording of crying children begging for their parents just after being separated from them.

The tape was made on June 17 when human rights advocates and journalists toured an old warehouse where hundreds of children were being kept in wire cages. The Associated Press reported that the children had no books or toys, overhead lighting was kept on around the clock, and the children were sleeping under foil sheets. There was no adult supervision and the older children were changing the diapers of the toddlers. 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. She had memorized her aunt's phone number.

ProPublica followed the child and her mother and reported that in August they were brought back together. 

 Facilities involved 
The Ursula detention facility,   Customs and Border Protection, in McAllen, Texas—On June 17, 2018, the facility held 1,129 people, including 528 families and nearly 200 children without parents. The facility has been called "the dog kennel" because a wire fence was used to separate people, including children separated from their parents. The caged areas had no toys or books for the children. 

 Detention of parents 

 Port Isabel Detention Center, operated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in Los Fresnos, Texas held parents. Several members of Congress met with ten women who  were separated from their children. Some of them did not know where their children were. 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 uncontrollably crying.


 Estrella del Norte, in Tucson, Arizona  housed 287 children in June 2018. A former worker said they were told not to allow brothers and sisters to hug each other and siad it was like a prison.
 Three facilities in Combes, Raymondville and Brownsville (Casa El President, operated by Southwest Key), in southern Texas, were  set up to hold children under five years old. They had "play rooms" filled with crying children.

 Upbring New Hope Children's Shelter in McAllen, Texas. About sixty children were held in this facility. When the children got there, the people working there took away everything thie children had, and the workers were not allowed to comfort or touch the children. 

 Reunification 
The Trump Administration began to try to bring the parents and children back together again  in June 2018. 
On June 26, 2018, Dana Sabraw, a  judge said that all separated children under five years old must be given back to their parents in two weeks, and all other children must be given back in thirty days.

in January 2021, President Biden ordered  that parents who were deported while separated from their children could return to the United States to be with their children. More than 1,400 parents had been deported without their children.

References

Category:United States Department of Justice
Category:United States Department of Health and Human Services
Category:Human rights abuses in the United States
Category:Articles containing video clips