Remember the summer of 2018? I sure do. That June the people of the United States learned that their government had approved a policy of widespread family separation against asylum seekers who presented themselves at our southern border.
The horror of the policy produced a collective scream and the Trump administration ended it. Or so they said. We now know that the policy, designed to deter asylum seekers, actually began in 2017, before the official “zero tolerance policy” was adopted in 2018, that it has not ended, and that its implementation was so callously sloppy that there are still many families that have not been reunited. We know that the trauma resulting from tearing children from their families affects children for their entire lives.
When did the country that treasures its beautiful symbol of welcome, the Statue of Liberty, become the nation that silently assents to immigration policies fueled by prejudice and scapegoating, that result in crimes against humanity?
Parents and children continued to be separated at the border and, in addition, other ways of carrying out this form of asylum “deterrence” emerged.
For example, the large shelters for unaccompanied migrant youth contained many children who crossed the border with family members, just not parents. I am personally aware of a family where an aunt was raising two children after her sister, their mother, was murdered. Since the aunt was not the children’s biological mother, they were separated. Imagine the pain experienced by these children losing both their mother and then the aunt who was mothering them.
Once MPP, the Migrant “Protection” Protocols, were adopted in January 2019, asylum seekers were no longer allowed to present themselves at a port of entry at the U.S. border. Instead, they were forced to remain in Mexico.
A large camp formed in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas. Organized criminals prey off this population, extorting money from them, raping women and young girls, and kidnapping kids to traffic. As a way of protecting their kids, parents have sent them across the border alone, believing that as an unaccompanied child, they would be put in a shelter, somewhere safer. I’ve read accounts of mothers sending very young kids across the bridge to Brownsville. Our policies have forced parents to make anguished decisions.
July 17 was supposed to be a significant deadline for asylum-seeking children living in one of the three family shelters in the United States. Federal Judge Dolly Gee ruled that, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, children who had been detained over 20 days must be released. However, the deadline has been extended a week as “papers” are being designed for parents to sign. What papers? Since it is outside the judge’s jurisdiction to free their parents, parents will choose between two options: either keeping their kids with them in a dangerous environment or releasing them to sponsors.
The papers they sign will record their “choice.” It is possible that the parents will then be deported without their children. The family detention centers are overseen by ICE (Immigrant and Customs Enforcement), which is given broad discretion over detainees’ lives. After Judge Gee’s ruling, ICE could easily have released intact families until the pandemic has subsided.
There are plenty of options for keeping tabs on families, but ICE has chosen the cruelest road. This is what is being done in our name. Are you okay with causing more trauma for vulnerable families, with the cruelest choice?
(Glen Ring taught Social Studies for 26 years in the Concord School District. She now teaches ESL for adults and tutors New American students.)