Outraged Americans have donated nearly 47 million airline miles to aid in the reunification of separated migrant families and other asylum seekers, Miles4Migrants told Newsweek. “To date, the organization has seen more than 740 family members reunited, with ‘about 50 percent’ of those from families that had been separated under the Trump administration's policies.”
Families have not only been forced to deal with the trauma of family separation, but they’ve also been forced to pay hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to cover airfare for children eligible for release. While in the past this was sometimes waived by the federal government, that hasn’t been the case for many parents under the Trump administration.
This is where Miles4Migrants has been able to help. While the organization has been around since 2016, it saw a surge in donations due to public outrage over the official implementation of the administration’s barbaric “zero tolerance” policy. In the span of just days last August, Miles4Migrants got more than 28 million miles in donations.
Some of those miles helped 6-year-old Ariel, who last month was reunited with his dad Jesus, who was among the 29 deported parents who returned to the U.S. to reunite with their children. But while he was also among the lucky few to be quickly released from federal immigration custody, he had no idea how he was going to get from California to Washington, D.C., where the boy was living with relatives.
This is where the organization stepped in, assisting Jesus with the airline miles he needed to get to Virginia. “Thank God these organizations helped us to reunite with our son,” he said. “We are happier now." The organization also sent the donor, attorney Mindel De La Torre, a photo of the family’s reunion. “It was extremely emotional for me,” she said.
Other kids are still waiting for their day to be reunited with their families. While a federal judge recently declared that reunification was essentially completed, dozens of kids are still in U.S. custody. That same judge is also currently deciding the fate of potentially thousands of other families that were separated before the policy’s official implementation. Family separation remains a crisis.