Report on Family Separations at U.S./Mexico Border

As many as 1,360 children have never been reunited with their parents six years after the U.S. government separated them at the U.S./Mexico border. Efforts by the U.S. to help separated families have not adequately reckoned with the severe harm inflicted on them, Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School said in a report released yesterday.

The report, ‘We Need to Take Away Children’: Zero Accountability Six Years After ‘Zero Tolerance,’ finds that the government refused, in many cases for days or weeks, to disclose the circumstances and whereabouts of separated children to their parents. 

The report notes that “[s]enior officials who played a leading role in developing and implementing the policy include Thomas Homan, recently tapped to be President Trump’s incoming “border czar,” and Matthew Whitaker, whom Trump has stated he will nominate as U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Stephen Miller, the White House adviser who helped design the 2017 travel ban on citizens of predominantly Muslim countries and advocated for the closure of the border to asylum seekers on public health grounds, is expected to be the president’s deputy chief of staff for policy.”

Will the family separation policy make a comeback in some form in the second Trump administration?

KJ