Family separation at the southern border isn’t happening solely due to the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. CNN reports that 135 children currently under the watch of the Department of Health and Human Services were sent to the U.S. alone by desperate families that have been forced to wait out their asylum cases in Mexico under another inhumane policy.
Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico,” have forced thousands of vulnerable asylum-seekers into horrific camps and dangerous regions along the border. Now parents desperate to free their kids from squalid conditions have been forced to send them to the U.S. alone. “In recent weeks,” CNN said, “some case managers who work with unaccompanied children began hearing stories from kids who were in Mexico with family members and have since crossed alone, according to a source close to the situation.”
“[D]ozens of parents have watched as their children, sleeping outside in the cold, have become sick or despondent,” The Washington Post reported. “U.N. officials say they were told months ago that the migrants would be moved by the Mexican government to better conditions. It hasn’t happened.” One 8-year-old had reportedly spent two months waiting in Mexico before his dad sent him across the border alone. That in itself can be dangerous, but these families have been forced into such desperate situations that they’ve decided the alternative—staying in camps and violent regions—is far worse.
Human Rights First has in fact documented hundreds of instances of rape, kidnapping, and other violence against people sent to Mexico. “Some returned asylum seekers have been targeted outside of Mexican migration offices, and in transiting to and from U.S. ports of entry to attend immigration court,” a report from the organization also found. Others have been targeted in the shelters that are supposed to keep them safe, yet the administration still had the gall to falsely claim that the program has “successfully provided protections” to families.
While this isn’t the administration’s family separation policy, it’s the administration’s actions nonetheless that are leading to more senseless separations, to add onto the already thousands that officials have carried out since 2017. "Parents are sending their kids in order for them to find refuge,” a source told CNN. “We're forcing them to separate in order for them to care for their children.