STATEMENT: Our Fight to End Family Separation Is Not Over Until All Families Are Reunited
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Washington, D.C., October 22, 2020—This week, NBC reported that 545 of the children who were taken away from their families during a trial run for the “Zero Tolerance” policy remain separated. Many of the parents were deported without their children and haven’t been found.
Young Center Executive Director Maria Woltjen released the following statement in response:
This all began in the summer of 2017, when Young Center staff across the country reported a sudden increase in the number of children CBP had taken away from their parents. What we were seeing was the pilot program. For three months, all children were taken away from their parents in the El Paso sector of the border. The parents were detained. Their children flown to shelters across the country. We immediately rang the alarm, knowing that split-second decisions to separate families could take months or years to undo. The government denied any practice or policy of family separation. But in the coming months the separations escalated as the government officially launched its “Zero Tolerance” policy across ports of entry on the southern border, dramatically increasing the number of children taken away from their parents.
As our staff worked to reunify families, we saw firsthand how heart wrenching and complex this situation was. DHS had failed to keep records about the families they separated. They deported parents without notifying their children. In some cases, the children were so young, they couldn’t tell shelter staff their addresses or phone numbers and it was left to attorneys and social workers to find the parents and work to get them reunified. Our staff used every means possible to find the parents. We used every scrap of information we could get from DHS officials and shelter staff. We collaborated with partner organizations in other countries. We used word of mouth. Despite our work and that of dozens of other human rights organizations, 545 children remain separated from their parents.
And family separation hasn’t ended. In June, we released our report “Family Separation Is Not Over: How the Trump Administration Continues to Separate Children from their Parents to Serve Its Political Ends” documenting two years of this inhumane policy, and describing family separations that continue to this day. CBP has separated hundreds of children from parents who had offenses on their record, regardless of their ability to safely parent their child, or for a minor offense like a shoplifting charge from eight years ago. For the last six months, DHS has been “expelling” children, sending them back to their home countries or to Mexico, without asking where their parents are, or whether they will be safe. All under the cover of COVID. In addition, despite a global pandemic, ICE has ramped up raids, leaving children in fear that their parents and families will be deported. And ICE has obstinately refused to release families—parents and children trapped in family detention, forcing parents to “choose” between separating from their children to get their kids out, or staying together in detention. ICE has full authority to free the families in its custody, but stubbornly refuses to consider the danger of COVID, and do the right thing.
Tuesday’s report about the 545 children who remain separated from their parents is one more reminder of this administration’s cruelty to children.
The fight for immigrant children's rights and to end family separation is not over. Please join us in demanding that families belong together.
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The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights is a non-profit organization that protects and advances the rights and best interests of immigrant children and advocates for an immigration system that treats children as children first. For press inquiries, please contact Noorjahan Akbar at media@theyoungcenter.org or 202-725-7184.