Donald Trump's “zero tolerance” immigration policy may be dead and gone, but the nightmare isn't over for thousands of migrants separated from their loved ones. Before its end three years ago, the stringent 2018 policy resulted in the separation of at least 5,000 children from their families, with no plan to aid the reunification process.
Six years later, families are still struggling to reunite while fighting to gain asylum and stay in the United States. As my colleague Isabela Dias wrote:
In 2021, President Joe Biden took office, formally rescinded “zero tolerance,” and installed a reunification task force under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Since then, a number of impacted parents and families separated between 2017 and January 20, 2021, have been temporarily allowed to return to the United States for three years through a discretionary program known as parole.
But the months and, in some cases, years of separation have taken a toll. “A lot of children who were separated felt abandoned by their parents and so there was resentment when they reunited,” says Nan Schivone, the legal director of Justice in Motion. “We worked on cases where children didn’t recognize their parents when they were returned to them.”
And to make matters worse, Trump has promised that if he gains the presidency, he’ll implement an even harsher version of his anti-immigration policy, reportedly giving this quote in a November Univision appearance: "It stopped people from coming by the hundreds of thousands because when they hear 'family separation,' they say, 'Well, we better not go.' And they didn't go.”
Time will tell who wins the upcoming presidential election, but we already know who Trump is.
—Arianna Coghill
