It’s been nearly one year since former Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III rolled out the barbaric “zero tolerance” policy that resulted in the state-sanctioned kidnapping of thousands of children at the southern border. Under nearly universal condemnation, Donald Trump was forced to stage an Oval Office photo-op purporting to end the practice in June. But family separations at the border have continued, says an immigration and refugee group.
“In just the last several months, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) has identified 10 children in our care who have been recently separated from their parents at the border,” CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said. One was an 8-month-old baby who was torn from his mom on Christmas Eve. “I can’t begin to understand the rationale for such a cruel separation, but I can imagine the grief of the mother and the helplessness of the baby, cut from his primary source of love, nourishment and comfort.”
While a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop this humanitarian disaster and reunite families, he did permit officials to remove a child if “the parent is unfit or presents a danger” to them. Border officials, though, have abused this clause and separated families based on outright lies, including accusing parents of gang affiliations. It’s unknown if any of the children in LIRS care have been separated under these circumstances, but they have been cruelly separated nonetheless.
Two-year-old “Estefany was in her mother’s arms when her mother was brutally murdered by gangs,” O’Mara Vignarajah continues. “Three months later, her father was also killed. Estefany was taken in by her only living relatives—her aunt and uncle. The family, along with Estefany’s cousin, decided to flee to the United States, where they were apprehended. Even though her uncle had official documentation of her father’s passing and that the aunt and uncle were Estefany’s only living relatives, the family was separated.”
While the vast majority of children separated under the policy have been returned to parents or allowed to live with relatives, some were sent to foster homes. Fifty-four remain in U.S. custody, according to a recent court hearing in the family separation lawsuit. Nearly a year after state-sanctioned kidnapping at the southern border became official U.S. policy, family separation remains a crisis. “With every passing day,” O’Mara Vignarajah says, “every passing April, we become more and more complicit in one of the most barbaric, immoral, and anti-American embarrassments in our history.”