October 29, 2020

US can’t locate parents of separated migrant kids

topic:	Refugees and Asylum
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

Nearly three years after over a thousand migrant families were separated by immigration authorities at the US Southern border, the parents of 545 children have yet to be located. Efforts to track down the parents, who have been deported from the United States back to their home countries in Central America, are being carried out by the American Civil Liberties Union and several other NGOs and human rights advocates with paltry support by the federal government.

The parents of the 545 children currently being looked for belong to a group of migrant families that were separated as part of a 2017 pilot program that preceded the notorious 2018 ‘zero tolerance’ policy, during which the government prosecuted migrants crossing into the US from Mexico without authorisation (regardless of whether or not they sought asylum) and separated them from their children in the process. 

The 2017 pilot programme – which was masterminded by top Justice Department officials, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the president’s anti-immigration adviser Stephen Miller – was a covert initial attempt at deterring migrants from coming to the US by tearing families apart. By the time the pilot programme was exposed in 2019 (long after a Southern California judge ordered the reunification of families separated under the 2018 zero-tolerance policy), an estimated two-thirds of parents had been deported to their countries of origin by the US government. 

Due to the fact that the programme was kept under wraps, and was withheld even from key immigration enforcement agencies, record-keeping of the families separated by the government in 2017 was extremely poor, and efforts to trace the deported parents have proven to be enormously difficult.

With the government all but relieving itself of the “onerous” mission of retracing the steps of the parents it had deported without their children, a coalition of human rights lawyers, NGOs, and advocates have been shouldering the task on their own.

Justice in Motion is among the organisations leading the search in Central America and has deployed a network of “defender” lawyers in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua who cooperate with colleagues in the United States to try to track down the parents. Aided by other NGOs, the campaign to search for the parents often includes going door-to-door, contacting local courthouses and radio stations, and following any lead that may be useful in tracing them. “[W]e were tasked with cleaning up the government's mess,” Cathleen Caron, founder and executive director of Justice in Motion, told As It Happens host Carol Off. 

Since many of the deported parents had fled their home countries due to gang-violence or other threats to their safety, some of them have had no choice but to go into hiding upon their deportation, which makes the task of tracking them down all the more challenging and perilous. 

Some of the parents who were successfully located had to make the painful choice between reuniting with their kids or having them remain in the US without them, fearing for the children’s safety should they be returned. 

Despite the relentless efforts of NGOs such as the ACLU and Justice in Motion to locate the parents, it is possible that a great number of these families will never be reunited. All the while, the separated children, as well as their parents and communities, are enduring traumas that will scar them for life. “What these children went through has been now categorised as government-sanctioned child abuse by the American Academy of Pediatrics, as ‘torture’ by Physicians for Human Rights,” said Jacob Soboroff, a correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC and author of the New York Times bestseller Separated: Inside an American Tragedy.

It is important to stress that this tragedy, which spans across borders and continents, concerns the entire international community. According to the United Nations, the number of international migrants across the world in 2019 has reached an estimated 272 million people - a 51 million increase since 2010. With the scourges of ecological degradation, climate change, political instability, and large-scale human rights violations steadily intensifying, the number of international migrants fleeing for safety can only be expected to grow over the coming decades. 

The belligerent anti-immigration stance of far-right governments and the cold-heartedness with which migrants’ lives are being handled will result in chaos, displacement, abuse, and death of historic proportions unless they are objected to by the public. A global outcry calling to coordinate efforts to assist asylum seekers and protect their well-being and rights is urgently needed. 

Call to Action

Reunite deported migrants with their children

Support now