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.[1] It was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018.[2] Under the policy, federal authorities separated children and infants from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US.[3][4][5] The adults were prosecuted and held in federal jails or deported, and the children were placed under the supervision of the US Department of Health and Human Services.[3] A 2021 review done by the Biden administration found that more than 1,400 parents were ultimately deported without their children. In January 2020 the SPLC reported that the official government number of children separated from their parents or guardians under the policy was 4,368.[6] [7]
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By early June 2018, it emerged that the policy did not include measures to reunite the families that it had separated,[8][9] Following national and international criticism,[10] on June 20, 2018, Trump signed an executive order ending family separations at the border.[11] 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 thirty days.[12][13] In 2019 a release of emails obtained by NBC News it was revealed that although the administration had said that they would use the government's "central database" to reconnect the thousands of families that had been separated, the government had only enough information to reconnect sixty children with their parents.[14] By November 2020, the parents of 666 children still had not been found.[15] The administration refused to provide funds to cover the expenses of reuniting families, and volunteer organizations provided both volunteers and funding.[16][17][18]
The House Committee on Oversight and Reform reported in July 2019 that over 700 children had been separated from their parents after the policy's official end.[19] In July, it was reported that as many as five children per day were being separated,[20] and by the end of the year, the total had reached over 1,100.[7]
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."[21][22][23]
In June 2019, a group of attorneys 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.[24][25][26]
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.[27][28][26]
Obama administration
President Barack Obama made changes to immigration policy, releasing parents and focusing on deportation of immigrants who committed crimes in the US.[29] Attempting to cope with the 2014 American immigration crisis, a surge of unaccompanied children and women fleeing violence in Central America, while complying with the 1997 Flores v. Reno Settlement Agreement consent decree by keeping families together, under Obama the Department of Homeland Security built family detention centers in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and Texas.[30][31][32] Unaccompanied children were kept in holding cells, separated by age and gender while appropriate placements were found.[33][34]
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.[35]
In 2016, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Flores v. Lynch[36][37] 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.[38][37]
Trump administration
Presidential candidate Donald Trump said ending "catch and release" was the second of his two priorities for immigration reform, after walling off Mexico.[39][40]
When the 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."[31] The Obama Administration did consider separating families, but decided against it.[41]
Role of Stephen Miller
Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller has been characterized as being the driving force behind the Trump administration’s family separation policy.[42][43][44][45][46] NBC News reported that officials in attendance of a meeting of senior advisers said that "Miller warned that not enforcing the administration's zero tolerance immigration policy 'is the end of our country as we know it' and that opposing it would be un-American."[47]
Refusal to accept asylum seekers at border crossings
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."[48][49]
The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General concluded that this practice, which it calls "metering" legal entry "leads some aliens who would otherwise seek legal entry into the United States to cross the border illegally".[50]
The administration also cancelled the Central American Minors Program (CAM) which had given the hope to parents that they would be able to bring their child into the US legally—ending the parole portion of the program in August 2017 and no longer accepting new applications for the refugee portion of the program as of November 9, 2017.[51] The CAM program had allowed some parents to bring their children legally to the US since 2015, with the children gaining the right to apply for citizenship if they were granted special refugee status. Due to the processing delays, the program had not offered relief for those who faced the threat of immediate danger, yet at the level of the individual families it had made it less attractive to bring children illegally, as there was the prospect of legal entry.[52]
On July 15, 2019, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice announced an Interim Final Rule to take effect on July 16 that would rule foreigners who cross the US–Mexico border ineligible for asylum if they had not previously applied for asylum in countries they had traveled through, effectively barring asylum claims on the border from nationals of Central America and Cuba.[53][54] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) promised to immediately challenge the rule in court.[53][54] On July 24, 2019, judge Timothy Kelly of the DC District Court upheld the new rule, but that same day judge Jon Tigar of the Northern California District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the rule, halting its implementation until the legal matters could be resolved.[55] After some back-and-forth rulings on whether this hold applied nation-wide, the Supreme Court struck down the hold on September 11, while the court challenge to the policy continues.[56]
DHS "pilot program" in 2017
From July to October 2017, the Trump administration ran what the DHS called a "pilot program" for zero tolerance in El Paso. Families were separated, including families that were seeking asylum, and children were then reclassified as "unaccompanied" and sent into a network of shelters with no system created to reunite them with their parents.[57] The existence of this early "pilot program" first became widely known in June 2018, with reporting by NBC News from information provided by DHS.[9]
In May 2018, NPR spoke with a director at The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, an agency that advocates for the children's best interests. Asked if staff had noticed an increase in children coming in with parents and then separated from them at the border, the director told NPR, "We noticed as early as late spring of 2017, and through the winter and now the spring of this year, 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."[58]
According to an April 2018 memo obtained by The Washington Post, the government viewed the El Paso experiment as successful in that it showed a 64 percent drop in apprehensions while apprehensions began to rise in October when it was paused. According to a Border Patrol report on the initiative, the El Paso sector processed approximately 1,800 individuals in families and 281 individuals in families were separated under this initiative.[59] This "experiment" was eventually used by ICE, CBP, and CIS to launch the zero-tolerance program across the entire Southwest border in April.[57]
Proposals of family separation as a means to deter immigration
Two weeks after Trump was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2017, the administration reviewed the idea of separating immigrant children from their mothers as a way to deter asylum-seekers.[38][60] 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.[38][37] John Kelly, then Secretary of Homeland Security, confirmed that the policy was under consideration,[58][61] but later denied it.[62][63] 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.[64]
The American Academy of Pediatrics issued a statement to address media reports of the plan, "We urge policymakers to always be mindful that these are vulnerable, scared children", and they offered to assist Homeland Security in "crafting immigration procedures that protect children".[65] In March, more than a month prior to the official "zero tolerance" decision, the ACLU filed a class-action lawsuit against the Trump administration charging that the administration was illegally separating hundreds of children from their parents while the parents awaited asylum proceedings.[66]
On April 5, the DHS said they were no longer considering the policy partly due to the steep decline in mothers attempting to travel to the US with their children;[67] however, Attorney General Jeff Sessions then ordered an escalation of federal prosecutions. Parents were being charged with misdemeanors and jailed while their children were classed as unaccompanied and placed under DHS care. Within five months, hundreds of children were reported to have been separated from their parents.[68] 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".[69] 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.[35]
By December, after a new surge in families crossing the southern border, the DHS was again considering the policy to separate children from parents.[70] In January 2018, 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 US 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."[71]
Administration issues "zero-tolerance" policy
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.[72][73] 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.[3][74]
Multiple media accounts, as well as direct testimony from detained migrants to members of Congress, reported that immigrant families lawfully presenting themselves at ports of entry seeking asylum were also being separated.[75][76][5] 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, "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."[4] Later in the day Nielsen tweeted: "We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period."[77]
The departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security did not take steps in advance of the April 2018 announcement to plan for family separations or a potential increase in the number of children who would be referred to HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) because they did not have advance notice of the announcement, according to agency officials interviewed by the Government Accountability Office. Though they did not receive advance notice of the April 2018 announcement, ORR officials said they were aware that increased separations of parents and children were occurring prior to the April announcement, saying the percentage of children referred to the agency who were known to have been separated from their parents rose by more than tenfold from November 2016 to August 2017.[78]
The policy is notably unpopular, more so than any other major bill or executive action in recent memory.[79] Poll aggregates show that approximately 25 percent of Americans supported the policy, although a majority of Republicans supported it.[79][80] Following the May announcement, dozens of protest demonstrations were held, attracting thousands. In Washington, D.C., Democratic members of Congress marched in protest.[81] 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,[82][83] 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.[84]
From January 2018 to June 2018, the civil rights office of the Department of Homeland Security received 850 complaints regarding family separations, most of which came from a fellow federal government agency, the ORR. Over 100 complaints predated the "zero tolerance" policy.[85]
Zero-tolerance policy reversed
Despite previously asserting that "You can't [reverse the policy] through an executive order",[86] on June 20, 2018, Trump bowed to intense political pressure and signed an executive order to reverse the policy[87] while still maintaining "zero tolerance" border control by detaining entire families together.[88][89][90] Asked by a reporter why he had taken so long to sign the order, Trump asserted, "It's been going on for sixty 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."[91][92] The Trump administration said that they would use the government's "central database" to reconnect the thousands of families that had been separated. However, with the release of emails obtained by NBC News in 2019 it was discovered that there was no central database and the government had only enough information to reconnect sixty children with their parents.[93]
When it became clear that "zero tolerance" could not be sustained while keeping families together within the scope of court rulings, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced on June 25 that the agency would cease referring every person caught crossing the border illegally for prosecution, effectively ending the "zero tolerance" policy.[94] Implementing "zero tolerance" was a "huge challenge operationally for our agents", McAlee said: Border Patrol stations were being overwhelmed by the number of children being held in crowded conditions in holding cells while their parents were processed in court and held in immigration detention, and agents were spending more time processing detained immigrants than guarding the border.[94]
On June 26, a Federal Court ordered the government to reunify separated families with children under age five within fourteen days of the order, and families with minor children age five and over within thirty days of the order.[90] On September 20, 2018, the government reported to the court that it had reunified or otherwise released 2,167 of the 2,551 children over five who had been separated from a parent and deemed eligible for reunification by the Government.[95] However, a report released in January 2019 revealed that while HHS had previously said that the total number of children separated from their parents was less than 3,000, a new investigation revealed that the actual number of separated children was several thousand higher, with the exact number unknown due to poor record keeping. HHS officials had noticed a "steep increase" in separated children from the summer 2017.[22][21][23]
Continued separations and controversial facility conditions
Congressional hearings
In January 2019, the congressional Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee announced that they will hold hearings "to assess the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) preparation and response to the Family Separation Policy, its chaotic efforts to reunify children with their families, and the long-term effects of separation on the health and wellbeing of these children".[97]
In February 2019, the House held the first of three planned hearings to bring renewed scrutiny to the events and effects surrounding the Trump zero tolerance policy.[98] Secretary Alex Azar refused a request to testify and Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said she would appear at the second hearing in March. Jonathan White, who oversaw the care of minors for HHS, testified that neither he nor any other career person in the department's Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) had been informed of the new Trump policy and if they had they would not have supported it. He warned that "Separating children from their parents poses significant risks of traumatic psychological injury to the child. The consequences of separation for many children will be lifelong."[99]
The second meeting was held on March 6. The committee questioned Kirsten Nielsen about the treatment of migrants along the border and her claims that the Trump administration never had a family separation policy. Nielsen denied that the administration intended to separate families but was merely enforcing US law: "The point of it was to increase prosecutions for those breaking the law." When questioned about the "cages", as they have been called, used as enclosures at a Border Control facility, Nielsen replied, "Sir, they're not cages."[100]
Continuing family separations reported
There have been various media reports that the Trump administration had continued the family separation policy even after a court had ordered in June 2018 to put an end to routine family separations. Some of the reports included USA Today in February 2019,[101] The Boston Globe in March 2019,[102] Los Angeles Times in April 2019,[103] CBS News in May 2019,[104] and Houston Chronicle in June 2019.[105] In March 2019, the government reported to Judge Sabraw that 245 children were removed from their families, in some cases without clear documentation undertaken to track them in order to reunite them with their parents.[102][106]
In April 2019, officials in the Trump administration alleged that since around the end of 2018, Trump had repeatedly attempted to convince Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to resume and extend family separations regardless of legality and despite public concerns. Nielsen announced that she was leaving her position as department head on April 7, 2019.[107] Two days later, Trump denied reports he planned to renew and expand his family separation policy, asserting "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." In contrast to the Trump systematic family separation policy to deter migrants from entering the US, the Obama separation policy was used only in instances when the child's safety was in question or the adult had a prior criminal conviction.[108][109]
Poor conditions in holding facilities reported
In June 2019, a group of attorneys who are involved with the Flores settlement visited a Border Patrol center in Clint, Texas. The facility houses 250 children including a 1-year-old, two 2-year-olds, a 3-year-old and "dozens more under 12". The lawyers reported 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 supplied. When questioned, a Department of Justice attorney argued that the children were being properly cared for according to the legal standards but the standards did not mention that the children needed soap or toothbrushes. 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, 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."[110][111][112][26]
On July 1, 2019, several Democratic congress men and women visited migrant detention centers in Texas in a tour organized by Border Patrol agents at 48 hours' notice. Representative Marc Veasey said Border Patrol "went out of their way to show us facilities that were mostly empty", but the migrant detainees inside "described being deprived of daily showers and certain other rights".[113] Representative Madeleine Dean labelled the situation as "a human rights crisis." They reported fifteen women in their 50s and 60s sleeping in a small concrete cell 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". Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Judy Chu and Joaquin Castro alleged that Border Patrol had told detained migrant women to drink out of a toilet for water.[114][115][116] Castro also said that he had met between 15 and 20 mothers who had been detained for more than fifty days, some of whom had been separated from their children.[117] Representative Joe Kennedy III said that Border Patrol had been uncooperative, attempting to confiscate the congressmen's phones, and blocking the taking of pictures and videos.[118] Activists who had gathered at the facility chanted support for President Donald Trump and directed racist comments towards Representative Rashida Tlaib, a Muslim.[119]
Between January 2017 and April 2020, 39 adults have died in ICE custody or immediately after being released.[120] The ACLU reported, “As part of its recent growth, ICE has awarded contracts at facilities well known for abuse, including former prisons with conditions so terrible that the federal government terminated their contracts in prior administrations.”[120]Investigations found that some facilities were understaffed or engaged in cost cutting measures that could endanger the health of people in detention.[120][121][122]Medical facilities appeared dangerously unprepared with experts raising concerns for medical mismanagement of sick individuals.[121][120][122] In interviews, detainees shared concerns about sanitation and their ability to maintain personal hygiene standards as they were not being provided with soap for bathing or other basic hygiene and cleaning supplies.[120]
Reports detailed gaps in the provision of basic mental health services. Between January 2017 and March 2020, twelve people have died as a result of apparent suicide while in detention.[120] The ACLU has received reports of people in distress, including survivors of torture and sexual assault who did not receive timely access to support services.[120] Reports detail people with disabilities who failed to receive legally required reasonable assistance for their disabilities and instead faced abuse by detention officials.[120] It was also reported that "officers have used physical force, tear gas and pepper spray, and they have threatened immigrants in detention facilities."[120]
Multiple reports detail systematic health endangerment and neglect of detainees. Medical neglect, refusal to test immigrants for COVID-19, reported discard of medical requests submitted by detained immigrants, and fabricating medical records have been reported.[123] Concerns have been raised regarding the rate in which hysterectomies are performed on immigrant women under ICE custody.[124] This complaint also documents actions by ICDC management, such as allowing employees to work while they are symptomatic awaiting COVID-19 test results and hiding information from employees and detained immigrants about who has tested positive for COVID-19.[123][124]In addition, this complaint documents ICDC’s disregard for public health guidelines set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by maintaining unsanitary conditions and punishing immigrants with solitary confinement when they speak out against these injustices.[123][124]
Since 2017, the Trump administration has separated more than five thousand children from their parents.[125] In May 2020, it was reported that ICE presented detained families with the choice to release their children in lieu of remaining detained together despite rapidly increasing cases of COVID-19 in the facilities.[125] In July 2020, nearly a month after a federal ruling that the Trump administration release migrant children as rapidly as possible from Immigration and Customs enforcement centers due to COVID-19, 346 parents and children remained detained in facilities with COVID-19 outbreaks.[125] After a July 27, 2020 court deadline requiring ICE release children due to health risks posed by COVID-19, 120 children remained in custody.[123] Per the Flores settlement,[126] federal immigration officials cannot detain children for longer than twenty days. Despite that ruling, many children are detained for longer. At one Texas facility, it has been reported that 47 children have been detained for longer than three hundred days.[123]
2019 DHHS Office of the Inspector General reports
In 2019, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued two reports[127][128] which addressed the effects of separation and detainment on the mental health of migrant children and the deficiencies they found in children's holding centers including the under-staffing of mental health workers. The investigations were done in August and September 2018. Speaking with facility mental health clinicians and program directors, they reported that separated children exhibited "fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress" with some children exhibiting acute symptoms of grief such as crying inconsolably. While healthcare professionals have repeatedly spoken out about the trauma that is being inflicted on migrant children, this is the first time that Trump administration officials have acknowledged the harm that is being done.[129]
After reviewing the report, the organization Physicians for Human Rights commented that the government must end family separations, reunite those who have been separated, and provide reparations for the harm that separation has caused. They advised:
No child belongs in immigration detention, even if they are detained alongside their parents. This administration should immediately adopt community-based alternatives to detention, which are humane and effective, and which lessen trauma experienced by children and families.[130]
The report noted that the large influx of younger children and extended time they were spending in detention resulted in overcrowding and staff shortages. The investigation found that over half of the facilities that they visited had hired case managers who did not meet minimum education standards, and newly hired employees were allowed to work before their criminal and child welfare background checks had been completed. Six facilities received waivers allowing them to skip state child welfare checks altogether.[129]
Democratic Representative Rosa DeLauro, who chairs the House subcommittee that oversees HHS appropriations, said in a statement that the two reports were proof that Trump's family separation policy "was state-sanctioned child abuse". She commented:
The OIG found that separating kids from their families inflicted unspeakable trauma on them. They also noted that this trauma was extended as kids languished in warehouse-like facilities for months on end due to additional Trump administration policies, such as fingerprinting everyone in a sponsor's household. Meanwhile, some facilities were allowed to waive background checks and fingerprinting requirements for the workers that were tasked with caring for these children. That is unacceptable.[129]
The fingerprinting requirement was dropped in March when children were being held for as long as 93 days because sponsors feared arrest. After the fingerprint requirement was dropped, the length of stay was substantially less.[131]
The question of whether children were being given psychotropic medications was also addressed. The report showed that around 300 children were prescribed antidepressants in May–July 2018. The report noted that staff "described some concerns that dosages or types of medication may not have been right".[131]
Government documents reveal poor conditions
In December 2019, documents which were obtained during a lawsuit revealed that the Office of Refugee Resettlement, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services knew that the resettlement camps which housed many separated immigrant families were in poor condition and created health problems for some as well.[132] The Inspector General also concluded that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers didn’t accurately record possible family relationships between adults and 1,233 children detained between October 2017 and mid-February 2019.[132]
2021 DOJ Office of the Inspector General report
In January 2021, the Inspector General for the Department of Justice concluded an investigation into the "zero tolerance" policy, finding that: department leaders underestimated the difficulty of implementing it, failed to tell local prosecutors and others that children would be separated; failed to understand that separations would last longer than a few hours; and failed to halt the policy after that was discovered.[133] The findings led Rod Rosenstein, who had been Trump's Attorney General at the time the policy was enforced, to admit that family separations "should never have been implemented".[134] According to an NBC News report on the investigation, "The report could provide a road map for the incoming Biden administration to investigate those responsible for a policy President-elect Joe Biden has called criminal."[135]
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.[60]
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."[136]
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."[137] 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."[27]
The Washington Post quoted a White House official as saying that Trump's decision was intended to "force people to the table" to negotiate on laws in Congress.[138] 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][139]
Process
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detains families suspected of illegally crossing the border.[140] 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".[141] Under the Trump administration's "zero-tolerance" policy, the Department of Justice began to criminally prosecute all suspected illegal border-crossers for illegal entry, even those who crossed for the first time.[142][141] Families undergo separations when parents or adult relatives were charged with unlawful entry.[3]
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 twenty minutes to explain the charges and the process in Spanish."[141] People who plead guilty are typically sentenced to time served in jail, while repeat offenders may be sentenced to 30–75 days in jail.[141] Once convicted, they are eligible for deportation. Due to the Trump executive order, DHS no longer prioritized deporting those convicted of more dangerous crimes. They are then transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody.[140]
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 other cases the children may be removed to another location while the parent is in jail being processed, which generally takes a few hours.[143] 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 twenty days before releasing them.
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 thirty days to speak to their parents, due to difficulties locating them.[144] 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 in the United States.[145]
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.[146][147]
According to a report of June 27 by Texas Tribune, immigrant children as young as three years old have been ordered into court for their own deportation proceedings. Children in immigration court are not entitled to free, court-appointed attorneys to represent them. Instead, they are given a list of legal services organizations that might help them.[148][149]
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 Northern Triangle of Central America 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 were legally entitled to do under certain circumstances.[150][69] The Trump administration claims the family separation policy is directed at those migrants who illegally cross the U.S. border but they have decided to charge everyone crossing the border with illegal entry. They also charge asylum seekers in criminal court rather than waiting to see if they qualify for asylum.[151]
In June 2018, US Representative Pramila Jayapal spoke with recently arrived detainees at the Federal Detention Center, SeaTac facility located near Seattle. The facility housed 206 immigrants, 174 of them were women. Many of the women spoke of "fleeing threats of rape, gang violence and political persecution".[152] She said more than half of the women were mothers who had forcibly been separated from their children, some as young as twelve 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."[152]
Number of children
The Department of Homeland Security confirmed on June 15, 2018, that 1,995 immigrant children were separated from their parents (mostly due to not crossing at a legal port of entry)[153] during the six weeks from April 19 and May 31.[154] This figure did not include children of families that asked for asylum at an official border crossing and were then separated.[151][155] Speaking on Face the Nation on June 17, Senator Susan Collins suggested that the number may well be higher.[4]
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.[156]
Zero tolerance and the separation of children was suspended for an indefinite period of time on June 20, 2018, through an executive order. On June 26, US District Court Judge Dana Sabraw issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the family-separation policy and required the government to reunite separated families within thirty days and to reunite children under five with their parents within 14 days. On that date DHS stated that 522 migrant children, all of them in the custody of Customs and Border Protection, had been reunited with their families.[157] After a site visit to DHS facilities, Senator Elizabeth Warren reported that, "Mothers and children may be considered 'together' if they're held in the same gigantic facility, even if they're locked in separate cages with no access to one another."[158] The Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar testified that 2,047 children—out of a total of around 2,300 ever in HHS custody—continued to be held in HHS-contracted facilities.[159]
On July 5, Azar declared that the total number of children that had been separated was under 3,000 and that, of these, the number of children under five years was fewer than 100.[160] On July 6, government lawyers informed Judge Sabraw that HHS would be able to meet the deadline of July 19 for only about half the concerned children.[161] The government had connected 46 of the toddlers with parents still in custody.[162] Concerning the other half, the lawyers stated that the parents of 19 of the children had been released and now had unknown whereabouts, and the parents of further 19 children had been deported. Two children had been connected to parents criminally ineligible to re-take custody of their children.[162] Judge Sabraw said the time limit for reunifying the youngest children could be extended under the condition that the government would provide a master list of all children and the status of their parents. A list of 101 children was to be shared with the ACLU within the following day.[161] A status conference was scheduled for the morning of July 9 concerning which cases would merit a delay.[163][161] On July 6, a government lawyer provided the status of 102 children under five in custody to Federal Judge Dana Sabraw, and stated that numbers are approximate and "in flux".[162]
In September 2018 it was reported that 12,800 children were being held in federal custody, and that federal shelters housing migrant children were filled to around ninety percent since May 2018.[164]
A report by Amnesty International, published in 2018, found that the statistics on the separated children did not include children who had been separated from non-parental relationships, for example from grandparents, or those who were separated due to their documentation being insufficient.[165][166] In January 2019, auditors from the Office of the Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services stated that the practice of separating migrant children from their families started earlier and involved thousands more children than previously known, and that in the summer of 2017 a "steep increase in the number of children who had been separated from a parent or guardian" occurred.[167][168]
A followup government report released in January 2019, revealed that while HHS had previously said that the total number of children separated from their parents was 2,737, a new investigation revealed that the actual number of separated children was several thousand higher, with the exact number unknown due to poor record keeping.[22][21] HHS is not able to identify or count children who were released from the government's custody before officials started identifying separated families.[169] Following a court ruling in 2019, government officials stated that identifying all children would require a joint effort of 12 to 24 months duration led by a team of officials representing HSS, ICE and CBP.[170]
In October 2019 the Trump administration again revised its estimate of the number of children separated from parents, adding 1,556 to the previous number and bringing the total to almost 5,500. Approximately 1,090 of those separations occurred following the court order to end family separations. The ACLU continues to look for more children who were separated prior to the "zero tolerance" announcement. In a statement, ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said: "It is shocking that 1,556 more families—including babies and toddlers—join the thousands of others already torn apart by this inhumane and illegal policy. Families have suffered tremendously, and some may never recover. The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated."[171]
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.[18]
Impacts of separation on children
Children's mental health has had a strong correlation with forced parent–child separation and parental loss which has led to potential traumatic events (PTEs). Research has found that "forced parent–child separation and parental loss are PTEs with adverse effects on child mental health and academic functioning".[172] Reports show that children who have experienced PTEs from parent deportation have been more prone to being diagnosed with PTSD. Research also found that "emerging research has indicated that parental detention and deportation increase risk for mental health problems such as severe psychological distress, anxiety, and depression".[172] Due to these mental stressors, many of these children have reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from traumatic parent separations. A case study of 91 U.S. born citizens ages 6 to 12, using the UCLA Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Reaction Index and found that "29% of all child participants met criteria for full (19%) or partial (10%) PTSD diagnoses".[172]
A 2018 study looked at the impact of parent-child separation and child detention on the mental health and development of children. The author interviewed parents and children who had experienced separation and reported that the separation of the children from their parents together with a background of chronic and acute adversity has created a "perfect storm for attachment damage, toxic stress and trauma". The author noted that a child under prolonged stress "may develop complex patterns of protective responses that can include hyperarousal—hypervigilance, agitation, flashbacks and emotional reactivity, or hypoarousal—dissociative responses, emotional numbing (self-harm may be used as a tool to 'feel alive'), passive compliance and poor access to cognitive functioning". The study's findings also suggested that enforcement of immigration laws poses "serious health challenges and risks for lifelong mental illness in children".[173]
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.[174] 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.[174]
To handle the large amount of immigration charges brought by the Trump administration, federal prosecutors had to divert resources from other crime cases.[175] The head of the Justice Department's major crimes unit in San Diego diverted staff from drug smuggling cases.[175] 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.[175] In October 2018, USA Today reported that federal drug-trafficking prosecutions on the Southern border plummeted, as prosecutorial resources were diverted to the family separation policy.[176]
It was reported in June 2018, that the Trump administration plans to pay 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.[177]
In July 2018, it was reported that HHS had diverted at least $40 million from its health programs to care for and reunify migrant children, and that the HHS was preparing to shift more than $200 million from other HHS accounts.[178] In September 2018, it was reported that the Trump administration planned to shift more than $260 million from HHS programs, including those on cancer research and HIV/AIDS research, to cover the costs associated with detaining children and delaying releasing them to adults.[179]
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?"[180]
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. Michelle Brané, director of migrant rights at the Women's Refugee Commission commented, "If a parent left a child in a cage with no supervision with other 5-year-olds, they’d be held accountable".[181] 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 and ProPublica was able to contact the aunt, but 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.[182]
Commenting on Trump's executive order and how it was related to the tape of the children crying, Republican commentator Leslie Sanchez commented on Face the Nation, "And a lot of Republicans I talked to, even bundlers, people that put big amounts of money together, said, when they heard the cries of the children, without visual, being separated, that was the moment where America knew this was too far. And that's when the president retreated."[183]
ProPublica followed the child, Alison Jimena Valencia Madrid, and her mother and reported that in August they were reunited. A short video was posted in December 2018 which reports that Alison and her mother are learning English and Alison is going to school. Alison's mother said that gang members in El Salvadore had attempted to kidnap her daughter and she had fled to the U.S. to protect her. Their future remains uncertain.[184]
Allegations of forced medication and mistreatment
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 said 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".[185][186][187][188][189]
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.[185][186][187][188][189]
On July 30, 2018, a federal judge ruled that government officials have been in violation of state child welfare laws when giving psychotropic drugs to migrant children without first seeking the consent of their parents or guardians. According to the ruling given by Judge Dolly Gee, staff members have admitted to signing off on medications in lieu of a parent, relative, or guardian. The judge also ordered that the government must move all children from the facility except for those deemed by a licensed professional to pose a "risk of harm" to themselves or others.[190]
From 2014 to 2018, the Office of Refugee Resettlement received 4,556 allegations of sexual abuse or sexual harassment of immigrant children, 1,303 of which were referred to US Justice Department.[191]
Deterrence
Government data from 2018 suggests that the family separation policy did little to deter migrants from crossing the US border illegally.[192]
Legal proceedings
ACLU challenge and nationwide injunction
In June 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class-action lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of two mothers (one from Brazil, one from Democratic Republic of the Congo) who had been separated from their children, seeking a halt to the policy. On June 25, the ACLU requested an injunction halting the policy.[193][194] On June 26, US District Judge Dana Sabraw of the US District Court for the Southern District of California issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against the family-separation policy.[12][13]
In his opinion, Sabraw wrote: "The facts set forth before the court portray reactive governance—responses to address a chaotic circumstance of the government's own making. They belie measured and ordered governance, which is central to the concept of due process enshrined in our Constitution. This is particularly so in the treatment of migrants, many of whom are asylum seekers and small children."[12][13] Sabraw wrote that the federal government "readily keeps track of personal property of detainees in criminal and immigration proceedings", yet "has no system in place to keep track of, provide effective communication with, and promptly produce alien children".[195] The injunction barred the US government from separating parents and children at the border unless the adults presented a danger to children, and required the government to reunite separated families within thirty days, to reunite children under five with their parents within 14 days, and to permit all separated minors to speak with their parents within ten days.[12][13]
In March 2019, Judge Sabraw issued a preliminary ruling which would potentially expand the number of migrants included in the American Civil Liberties lawsuit after newly released government documents identified thousands more families that had been separated as early as July 1, 2017. In his ruling Sabraw called the documents "undisputed" and commented, "The hallmark of a civilized society is measured by how it treats its people and those within its borders."[196]
Judge Sabraw set a status hearing for July 6, 2018.[197] On July 6, the Trump administration asked for more time to reunite migrant families separated, highlighting the challenge of confirming familial relationship between parents and children, with parents of 19 of 101 detained children under the age of five already deported according to a Department of Justice lawyer.[198] The Judge set another deadline of Tuesday (July 10) for reunification, and gave the government until Saturday evening to create a list of all 101 youngest children along with an explanation of proposed difficulties. With the list the Judge believed that the two sides would be able to have "an intelligent conversation Monday (July 9) morning about which child can be reunited July 10, which can not—and then the court can determine whether it makes sense to relax the deadline".[198]
Second ACLU lawsuit
Charging the Trump Administration with initiating new government screening policies designed to bar immigrants from entering the country by preventing them from getting a fair hearing, on August 7, 2018, the ACLU filed a lawsuit which focuses on migrants who have been placed in fast-track deportation proceedings known as "expedited removal". The lawsuit was filed on behalf of twelve migrants who failed their "credible fear" interviews, one of the first steps for asylum seekers in the fast-track removal process.[199]
Challenge by 17 states
On June 26, 2018, a separate legal challenge to the family separation was brought by 17 states (California, Delaware, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington) against the Trump administration.[12] The suit was filed in the US District Court in Seattle. The plaintiff states, all of whom have Democratic state attorneys general, challenge the forcible separation of families as a "cruel and unlawful" violation of the constitution's Due Process and Equal Protection Clause.[200][12] Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson is leading the suit. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who represents California, called Trump's executive order putting a halt to the policy as an "empty and meaningless order that claims to take back policies that he [Trump] put in place himself as a political stunt".[201]
In a new motion filed on July 2, the group asked for immediate information and access to those who are being detained. The motion included more than 900 pages of declarations from family members as well as others who have been involved in the separation of the families. On July 5, PBS Newshour reported on 12 of the 99 declarations that they believe "offer a window into what's has been happening under the family separation policy". PBS included information from the declaration of one mother who wrote that her 1-year-old son was taken from her at a legal point of entry in November. She said that when they were reunited after three months, he cried continually, and when she removed his clothing, she found him to be dirty and infected with lice. Others spoke of multiple detainees, including young children, held in very small rooms or cages, sometimes "freezing" cold, and without adequate bathroom facilities. Several others wrote of a lack of food, including food for children. One woman wrote that she was kept in a cell with nearly fifty other mothers, and they were told "that they could not eat because they were asking about their children".[202]
Other court challenges
On August 23, 2018, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council filed a complaint with DHS alleging the "pervasive, and illegal, practice of coercing separated mothers and fathers into signing documents they may not have understood". According to the complaint, "the trauma of separation and detention creates an environment that is by its very nature coercive and makes it extremely difficult for parents to participate in legal proceedings affecting their rights". It also describes the use of "physical and verbal threats, the denial of food and water, the use of solitary confinement, the use of starvation, restrictions on feminine-hygiene products, and the use of pre-filled forms".[203]
Separately, a Guatemalan woman filed a federal lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia 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.[204][205]
Another lawsuit is that of a 9-year-old boy from Honduras who, according to the family, had fled with his father after his grandfather was murdered, was detained at the border and was separated from his father while sleeping. Another case is that of a 14-year-old girl who, so the lawsuit, had fled persecution in El Salvador and was lured away from her mother at a detention facility in Texas under the pretext of taking her to bathe. In both cases, the child was brought thousands of miles away.[206]
On September 5, 2018, a federal lawsuit was filed to seek monetary damages on the basis of the inflicted psychological harm and the creation of a fund to support the mental health treatment of the children.[207]
Flores filings
In 1997 the Flores settlement was signed into law. It says migrant children must be detained in the least-restrictive setting possible and only for about twenty days. On June 21, 2018, the Department of Justice (DoJ) asked US District Court Judge Dolly Gee to alter her 2015 ruling in Reno v. Flores on the conditions of family detention by the Department of Homeland Security. The government seeks to end a 20-day limit on family detention and to end the requirement that children be held in day care centers that are state-licensed.[195] The DoJ filing claims that limits on detention must be ended due to "a destabilizing migratory crisis".[195] Attorney Peter Schey, who represents the child plaintiffs in Flores, vowed to oppose the filing.[208] He filed an opposition on the grounds of there having been no significant change in circumstances warranting such a revision of the ruling.[209] On June 29, the DoJ filed a statement that in future the Government will ″detain families together during the pendency of immigration proceedings when they are apprehended at or between ports of entry″ in place of separating them.[210]
On July 9, Judge Gee denied the government's request to hold families together indefinitely in ICE facilities, and its request to exempt detention facilities from state licensing requirements for that purpose.[211][212] Gee wrote: "Absolutely nothing prevents Defendants from reconsidering their current blanket policy of family detention and reinstating prosecutorial discretion."[212][213]
On August 21, 2019, the Trump administration announced it was ending the Flores Agreement and replacing it with a new policy scheduled to take place in sixty days. The new policy will allow families with children to be detained indefinitely, until their cases are decided. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have sued the Trump administration to block the administration plan to end the Flores Agreement. They claim that the new policy will result in the expansion of unlicensed detention centers allowing the administration to "set its own standards for care—in effect, licensing itself".[214]
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, 2018, 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 they would 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".[215]
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 ten 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 uncontrollably sobbing.[215]
- South Texas Detention Facility, operated by the GEO Group, in Pearsall, Texas[216]
- Eloy Detention Center, owned and operated by CoreCivic, in Eloy, Arizona—This privately run immigration jail is ringed by barbed wire and an electrified fence. In late May 2018, detained parents had counted at least forty people who had been separated from their children among the 1,500 people detained in the facility; Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not release its own figures.[217][218]
- Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington—Adults separated from their child relatives were transferred to this facility, which suffered a chicken pox outbreak in late June, preventing a visit by Congressman Derek Kilmer.[219]
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 five percent of children held there had been separated from their parents.[220]
- Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Homestead, Florida—A housing facility for around 1,100 children. Approximately seventy children separated from their families are housed at the facility.[221] The facility had been opened and closed during the Obama administration and was recently reopened.[221]
- 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.[222]
- Tornillo tent city, operated by the Federal government in Tornillo, Texas—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.[223] Representative Beto O'Rourke, who led a protest on Father's Day, June 17, 2018, was told that two hundred children were being detained in the camp, twenty percent of whom were separated from their parents.[224]
- 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.[225] 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".[226]