Trump administration family separation policy

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The family separation policy under the first Trump administration was a controversial immigration enforcement strategy implemented in the United States from 2017 to 2018, aimed at deterring illegal immigration by separating migrant children from their parents or guardians. The policy, presented to the public as a "zero tolerance" approach, was intended to encourage tougher legislation and discourage unauthorized crossings.^[1] In some cases, families following the legal procedure to apply for asylum at official border crossings were also separated. Under the policy, federal authorities separated children and infants from parents or guardians with whom they had entered the US.^[2][3][4] 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 (HHS).^[2] Prior to their transfer to HHS, some children spent three weeks or more in overcrowded border control centers, where they reported minimal food, no access to clean clothes or bathing facilities, and no adult caretakers; girls as young as ten were taking care of younger children.^[5][6][7]

Family separations began in the summer of 2017, prior to the public announcement of the "zero tolerance" policy in April 2018.^[8] The policy was officially adopted across the entire US–Mexico border from April 2018 until June 2018.^[9] The practice of family separation continued for at least eighteen months after the policy's official end, with an estimated 1,100 families separated between June 2018 and the end of 2019.^[10] In total, more than 5,500 children, including infants, were separated from their families.^[11][12][13]

By early June 2018, it emerged that the policy did not include measures to reunite the families that it had separated.^[14][15] Scott Lloyd, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, had directed his staff not to maintain a list of children who had been separated from their parents.^[16] Matthew Albence, head of enforcement and removal operations for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had told his colleagues to prevent reunification even after the parents had been processed by the judicial system, saying that reunification "undermines the entire effort."^[16] Following national and international criticism,^[17] on June 20, 2018, Trump signed an executive order ending family separations at the border.^[18] 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.^[19][20] In 2019, a release of emails obtained by NBC News 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.^[21] The administration refused to provide funds to cover the expenses of reuniting families, and volunteer organizations provided both volunteers and funding.^[22][23][24] Lawyers working to reunite families stated that 666 children still had not been found as of November 2020, and by March 2024 the ACLU increased the estimate to 2,000 children.^[25][26]