How Family Separations at the Border May be Continuing

[Video:  Amnesty International]

Amnesty International has posted a detailed critique and series of recommendations related to the Trump Administration’s treatment of asylum seekers at the border.  It includes the unlawful practice of refusing to permit individuals to apply for asylum, continued, de facto family separations, and arbitrary and indefinite detention of asylum seekers. 

Drawing from Amnesty International’s research, Dara Lind writes in Vox in more detail about the family separations.  By using fraud as a justification, it appears that the Administration may be continuing to separate families at the border, for instance if children are traveling with extended family members such as grandparents or other family members, if their documentation cannot be verified, or if there are other reasons to question the existence of a parent-child relationship.   The article draws governmental statistics and reports on family separation and so-called zero tolerance.  Lind concludes: “‘Zero  tolerance may be over.  But without any real attention paid to allegations of family fraud, it’s impossible to say that the Trump administration has stopped separating families on a regular basis.”

-JKoh