Three years after Donald Trump ordered a crackdown on undocumented migrants crossing into the US, lawyers are still struggling to find the parents of 545 children separated from them under the “zero-tolerance” policy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
In a court filing, the ACLU said that about two-thirds of the parents had been deported back to the country of origin in Central America, leaving their separated children behind. In the rush to carry out Trump’s orders, the locations of the parents were not recorded and three years later they still cannot be found.
The zero-tolerance policy was announced in April 2018. It was later revealed that the administration had begun family separation the previous year under a secret pilot program.
In total, 1,030 children were removed from their parents by the US government under that pilot scheme, of whom 485 children have had their parents found under a scheme imposed by federal judges. The ACLU and a team of lawyers have been tasked by the courts with finding all the parents.
Under the pilot scheme, about 66% of the parents separated from their children were deported back to Central America before the court order was imposed on the Trump administration to find them. The search for the parents, who are called “unreachable” in the court document, has been hampered by the coronavirus pandemic.
The on-going suffering of hundreds of children and their parents lost to each other as a result of government action three years after the event has caused widespread anger and revulsion. Paola Luisi, director of the coalition of almost 250 groups, Families Belong Together, said that efforts would continue to find the parents until they had all been found.
“The Trump administration ripped 545 children away from their parents, lied about it, then lost track of them as they departed them into danger. That’s par for the course for a sadistic immigration system.”
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project, told NBC News: “We will not stop looking until we have found every one of the families, no matter how long it takes. The tragic reality is that hundreds of parents were deported to Central America without their children, who remain here with foster families or distant relatives.”
Family separation was one of the most visceral results of the Trump administration’s ruthless assault on illegal border crossing. The goal of the zero-tolerance policy was to criminally prosecute every migrant who entered the US without authorization – irrespective of the consequences to their families including their children.
The full horror of the administration’s intentions was only disclosed earlier this month when the New York Times reported previously unpublished communications between top officials. Jeff Sessions, then US attorney general, told prosecutors in a conference call in May 2018: “We need to take away children.”
Notes of that call taken by a participant added: “If care about kids, don’t bring them in. Won’t give amnesty to people with kids.”
The then deputy AG, Rod Rosenstein, told prosecutors at the time that children should be pulled away from their parents no matter how young they were – even if they were infants.
