‘Nearly half of the 650 children who were removed from their families in May are yet to be reunited’
WHILE in London in mid July, I emerged from the Tube station at Oxford Circus into a massive demonstration against President Donald Trump’s visit to the UK.
The anger and frustration expressed by the tens of thousands of demonstrators marching down Regent Street toward Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square reflected in part the introduction last April of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy, calling for the criminal prosecution of all individuals who enter the US illegally. The administration justified this policy by claiming there has been an increase in illegal apprehensions at the US-Mexico border in 2018.
The policy separates parents from children despite them entering the country together because parents are referred for prosecution and the children are placed in the custody of a sponsor, such as a relative, foster home, or shelter.
To date, under this new policy, more than 2,342 children have been separated from their parents, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Children advocacy groups and humanitarian organisations have aggressively protested against this new policy, arguing that breaking up families as a response to increasing illegal immigration creates human rights violations on multiple levels.
The UN Human Rights Office called for an end to the administration’s practice that separates children and parents, saying that using immigration detention and family separation “as a deterrent runs counter to human rights standards and principles”.
Criminalising an administrative offence like entering the country without legal paperwork, or overstaying a welcome, only creates an environment that strips immigrants of their basic human rights.
During the separation, there were no methods to measure the physical or mental health of either the children or parents. News media videos from the camps showed multiple small children contained in what appeared to resemble large cages, often appearing sad and confused, many of them under the age of five.
In the face of this widespread, scathing criticism of its policy and a federal judge’s order that the government must reunite all children under the age of five with their parents, the Trump administration reversed course and agreed to not separate children from their parents and reunite those who have been detained separately.
President Trump then baldly announced, without any evidence, that all eligible families separated as a result of his zero-tolerance immigration policy have been reunited.
The truth is very different. Nearly half of the 650 children who were removed from their families in May alone are yet to be reunited with their families.
As predicted by social organisations across the country, the government confronts logistical nightmares in carrying out this process, as their systems are not set up to reunify families. As of July 12, governmentprovided reunification data indicated that only 103 children under five years old were covered by the court order. Of those, 57 were reunited with their parents and 46 were ineligible for reunification.
After reunification there was no follow-up, and about half of those separated still cannot be traced back to their families due to system errors and administrative flaws. Meanwhile, young children remain vulnerable and lost within a US detention system that resembles prison.
Religious and community leaders were hopeful Trump would end the zero-tolerance immigration policy. They argued that it could cause irreversible psychological and mental damage to the development of children experiencing such toxic stress at such a young age.
But as of now, the zero-tolerance policy continues in place, and despite the order to keep families together, several hundred young children remain in detainment facilities without any hope of being back in their parents’ arms any time soon.
While the Trump Administration’s policy toward refugee families is particularly damaging, an anti-immigrant, anti-refugee, and nationalistic sentiment in America has also gained ground in Europe and the UK.
For many people in Britain, this nativist sentiment justified a vote for Brexit and control of the UK’s borders.
While criticising Trump, we should also examine our policies and values and recognise the tremendous benefit immigrants and refugees have brought to the US and to the UK.
■ Dr Short, a former Race Equality Commissioner for Wales, is now associate dean of Global and Community Initiatives and professor of practice at USC Suzanne Dworak School of Social Work in Los Angeles, California.