Campaign Action
The Trump administration has no plan on how or when it will reunite thousands of migrant children who have been torn from parents at the U.S./Mexico border. Some parents have already been deported without their children. Many other parents are languishing in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, wondering when—or even if—they’ll see their children again.
The Trump administration and its enablers know this is barbarism. Donald Trump has tried to blame Democrats for his policy, and even went in front of cameras to sign a sham executive order to deflect the crisis he created, but it remains a crisis nonetheless. Other officials have blocked elected leaders and media from much of what is going on inside facilities. But these are also parents who braved thousands of miles so that their children might live, and despite being in grief, they are speaking out:
Last week, The Times asked volunteers and attorneys visiting detained immigrant parents in Texas to convey written questions. More than a dozen mothers at the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, 30 miles north of Austin, responded. Volunteers from local nonprofit Grassroots Leadership shared their letters with The Times, identifying the women by first name because some of their asylum claims are still pending.
The mothers described watching their screaming children getting torn from their arms, with one mother saying that border officials threatened her with a Taser gun after crying out for her son. Others described “being reassured as they headed to court that they would see their children again, only to return and find them gone.” Sandra, separated from her 12-year-old son a month ago, was told by officials she’d see her boy again “in a matter of hours.” But, “it was all a lie,” she wrote. “From that day to this, they have not told me if they will give him to me or what will happen.”
“We beg you to help us,” wrote another mother. “Return our children.”
Despite a federal judge’s recent order that the administration must connect all kids with their parents through the phone by July 6 and physically reunite all kids with their parents by July 26, moms said in their letters they have have not heard from their kids, some for weeks now. The mom who was threatened with a Taser gun said it’s been more than 23 days since she talked to her son. “I asked about my son and they wouldn’t respond,” she wrote. “I insisted on knowing and they told me, ‘Ma’am, your son is not here, he is far away and you’re being deported to your country.’”
“It’s been a month since they snatched him away and there are moments when I can’t go on,” another mom wrote. “If they are going to deport me, let them do it—but with my child. Without him, I am not going to leave here.” This is a choice no parent should have to make, because immigrants have a right to due process, but this has been steadily attacked by Trump and mass deportation accomplices. “Some detained parents,” according to the Los Angeles Times, “told lawyers last week that they have been pressured by immigration officials to abandon their asylum claims if they want to see their children.”
“Is it that the president doesn’t have any children so he can ignore the pain he is causing us?” one mom of two said, writing that she fled her home country “because they threatened to kill me and my children.” Many parents and asylum seekers have fled dangerous conditions and some of the highest murder rates in the world to the safety of the U.S. “But here,” she continued on in her letter, “they killed us alive by taking away our children.”
Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of Americans took to the streets to demand an end to family separation, no family detention, and no “zero tolerance” policy, and it’s an urgency that must continue without pause until this administration’s barbaric actions come to an end and every single last child that has been separated by the administration is reunited with their parent in safety, not detention.
“When we’re together again, I will spoil you like always,” Claudia wrote in her note to her 7-year-old Kevin. “I will cook your meals and we will go on walks and I’ll lie next to you until you fall asleep. I love you, my prince. I hope to God and the Virgin Mary, my child, that we will soon be together and we’ll never be separated again. I love you baby, sending you kisses.”