In 2016, when current president Donald Trump was first elected into office, one of the promises he ran on was regulating the illegal immigration into America by building a wall bordering Mexico. Although the promise of this wall has been conducted even before Trump announced his candidacy, it has since been three years with little progress of a wall, and more progress of detouring asylum seekers from Mexico into the U.S.
Families arriving at the border are primarily seeking asylum, which is a person who has left their home country as a political refugee and is seeking protection in another. These individuals arriving are also in search of employment or escape of an impoverished life. Many with hopes of traveling to America have families, and once at the border are forcibly separated from each other.
Between October 1, 2017 and May 31, 2018, at least 2,700 children have been split from their parents. 1,995 of them were separated over the last six weeks of that window — April 18 to May 31 — indicating that at present, an average of 45 children are being taken from their parents each day.
The awareness of families being separated at the border has recently increased and the Trump administration and border patrol have come under immense fire. There is no official Trump policy stating that every family entering the US without papers has to be separated. What there is, is a policy that all adults caught crossing into the US illegally are supposed to be criminally prosecuted — and when that happens to a parent, separation is inevitable.
Typically, people apprehended crossing into the US are held in immigration detention and sent before an immigration judge to see if they will be deported as unauthorized immigrants. But migrants who’ve been referred for criminal prosecution get sent to a federal jail and brought before a federal judge a few weeks later to see if they’ll get prison time. That’s where the separation happens — because you can’t be kept with your children in federal jail.
Some families have been reunited however, the government is sending very mixed signals on how families can be reunited and whether the Trump administration is trying to make it happen at all. White House Chief of Staff John Kelly waved off questions about the policy saying children would be sent to “foster care or whatever”.
Thus, the lack of information and insight into the separation of families has allowed the government to ignore decent humanitarian rights and is finally raising the awareness it deserves.