Family separation and migrant detention under President Donald Trump’s administration traveled around the world as a news piece, including videos and images that showed children separated from their mothers, locked in cages, and crying.

A growing number of migrant families and children remain separated and in indefinite punitive detention in the U.S. Families are still being separated, despite the Trump administration’s official announcement of the end of its “zero-tolerance” policy. Fathers are imprisoned in detention centers. Children are sent to places such as shelters (detention centers for minors) or to foster homes thousands of kilometers away from their mother or father, many times without news of one another. The U.S. federal government and several “non-profit” organizations, including religious institutions, manage these shelters. According to the ProPublica news website, before the announcement of the “zero-tolerance” policy, these places accommodated almost “8886 unaccompanied children.”

Detention spaces for migrant children include a wide variety of facilities, from foster homes, shelters, border patrol stations, to detention centers.

Some of these facilities resemble warehouses. One example is Casa Padre, in Brownsville, Texas, a Walmart converted into a shelter for unaccompanied minors, where there are around 1500 migrant children. Another example is Tornillo Tent City (a temporary facility built in 2018), a temporary detention center for migrant children located at the border in Tornillo, Texas, and operated by the Office of Refugee Resettlement of the Department of Health and Human Services. Some of these shelters are managed by organizations like Southwest Key, which for twenty years have been running reception places that shelter unaccompanied migrant boys and girls under 18 years of age. This facility is part of the federal shelter system created as a result of the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement. Southwest Key has more than thirty shelters in the states of Texas, California, and Arizona.

However, family separation is not a recent problem in the United States, nor is it limited to the border region. Separations also occurred during the Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations. “In 1986 Reagan deported around 24 592 people, or 0.76% of the total undocumented population in the country, estimated at 3.2 million. During the George H. W. Bush Administration, there were 141 316 deportations. Also, in 2005, the construction of the first family detention centers began. With Barack Obama, 2.7 million immigrants were expelled from the country, despite his government opting for not separating families that crossed the border with their children”.

Forced family separation and deportation have a considerable number of negative impacts, not only for deportees, but also for the extended families and communities they leave behind and, especially, on boys and girls.

“Obama, not Trump deported my mother,” says Michelle, a twelve-year-old girl who faced her mother’s deportation to Mexico when she was five, together with her older sister Heidi. The two girls had to live without their mother for three years and to cope with her absence at a very young age. 

For a long time, Michelle and her family looked for help to reunite their family in New York. Together with Heidi and her dad, they organized a family reunification campaign with the New Sanctuary Coalition organization, intending to bring her mother back to New York City. She was only seven, and her sister Heidi was 15. Michelle recounts it as follows:

The two sisters have friends and relatives that were also separated from their mothers because of deportation.

For many girls and boys, family separation and living under the pressure and anxiety of the potential deportation of their parents at any time, has transformed their lives and childhoods dizzily. As a result of this experience, they begin to position themselves politically and become their family’s, neighborhood’s, and community’s spokespersons. Amid leaders of faith, activists, lawyers, and pro-migrant organizations, they learn to “fight” for their rights, without forgetting to make space for games, laughter, and fun.

Family separation is equivalent to making the father or mother disappear from the household. Returning home from school, the boy or girl realizes that his or her mother is not there, that she has left, that the immigration agents have detained her to deport her later. Suddenly, in a few hours, that child is left motherless. In other cases, the father cannot return home because immigration agents detain him in a raid at his job and deport him. Forced family separation exposes children to an uncertain future. 

But what differences and similarities exist between family separation caused by deportation, those due to economic displacement, and those resulting from zero-tolerance politics? How do they cast and shape migrant children’s human experience? How do the infrastructure and machinery for family separation and detention configure children’s social interactions, well-being, and mental health?

Hazel recalls that it was only after a few weeks of “imprisonment” when she could speak to her mother and tell her she was alive.

Since 2015, Hazel lives with her mother in Haven, Connecticut, and recently she became a U.S. resident. It’s also been a while since she’s been involved in the Unidad Latina en Acción organization and works as an activist with families sheltered in “sanctuaries,” and fights against family separation. 

For Hazel, there are many psychological and emotional consequences of “concealed” migration.

Under the Trump administration and its heavy-handed approach on migration—called “zero-tolerance policy”—family separation has had an impact on thousands of families. Betty’s is one case: a single mother from El Salvador who migrated to the United States to flee the mara’s gang violence. Her son’s father, a marero [a mara gang member], sexually abused her several times until she got pregnant. And even while he was in jail for years, he controlled her movements,

“He threatened to kill me if I didn’t visit him in prison.” 

When Betty crossed the U.S. border with Juan, her three-year-old son, immigration agents took her to a detention center in El Paso. In that place, “the policewoman” [sic] told her to hand her son over to bathe him as she couldn’t get out of her cell.

“I handed her my son, the same as other mothers. We didn’t think they would separate them from us.”

Betty didn’t hear from her son until three months later. She kept asking immigration agents,

“Where is my son?” They’d answer highhandedly, “What son? You didn’t bring a son with you. Go to your country. You people are like roaches.”

After being separated, Betty noted a change of behavior in her son. Juan didn’t want to be with her and was aggressive towards his mother. “He cried for whatever reason. He wasn’t the same boy I was separated from.” Juan had suffered an emotional trauma caused by the separation:

“Just imagine, we traveled from El Salvador up to the border. He was so quiet, so calm. He wasn’t like this. He wasn’t like this.”

The practices and procedures against people seeking asylum and refuge in the United States have intensified as a result of the “zero-tolerance” policy. When migrants seek asylum after crossing the border and undergo the “credible fear” interview, they are imprisoned for an indefinite time in detention centers, separated from their children, while they await an answer from the immigration authorities, or are in some cases set free. Sometimes they are allowed to leave detention, but under supervision and have to wear an electronic ankle monitor, like Betty.

Another case is Daisy’s, also a Salvadoran single mother, who, like Betty, was separated for three months from her three children. Lady, 15, Daira, 8, and Alan, 5. “We arrived in Arizona. There, immigration authorities got us. We surrendered. He requested asylum. Even then, they jailed us, and we were separated.”

After more than a month in the Eloy Detention Center in Arizona, together with other mothers who had also been separated from their children, Daisy heard of a lawyer who helped women like her get out of “jail” and recover their children. A new friend she met in “jail,” gave her lawyer Ricardo de Anda’s phone number and told her, “Call him. You’ll see, he’ll help you.” Daisy didn’t hesitate and phoned the lawyer. 

She was separated from her children in entering the detention center. When she asked the policemen for them, they answered mockingly, “Which children? You didn’t come with any children.” “That’s what happens for being illegal. Go back to your country.” She cried disconsolately. She was desperate and anxious to learn about her children. Other mothers in a similar situation expressed their solidarity. They told her, “Don’t worry. You’ll see your children again. Have faith in God.” 

After speaking to the lawyer, Daisy heard of their whereabouts. Immigration agents had sent them to Abbott House, a foster parents’ agency in New York City. Abbott House is a specialized private organization working with a program called Transitional Resources for Children, TRC. It has care centers for immigrant children entering the United States “without an adult guardian.” They are sheltered there for a brief time while a family member is identified. During their stay, children receive room and board, counseling, medical, and educational services, and case management. 

However, these foster parents’ agencies have aroused controversy. As a result of family separation, activists, politics, religious institutions, and leaders have organized rallies and press conferences to denounce that most migrant children in shelter homes entered the United States with their parents or a relative. Furthermore, they have reported that the U.S. government uses these centers as an instrument to separate migrant families, and at the same time,  they serve as a lucrative business. Other agencies receive children separated from their parents at the border: Cayuga Centers, Southwest Key Programs, Rising Ground, Jewish Child Care Association, Foster Care Center, Casa San Francisco, and so on.

In March 2019, Daisy met her two children, Daira and Alan, again in Abbott House. Lady, the eldest, was put in a psychiatric hospital without her consent. “My daughter couldn’t cope emotionally with separation; the trauma was intense.”

During her stay in New York, Daisy and her family got help from Sanctuary Neighborhood, a migrant support network involving members of civil society, activists, and religious leaders.

After a week of attending the Manhattan psychiatric hospital where her daughter was confined, Daisy succeeded in having the doctors discharge her. Lady was quiet and, at the same time, moved. She thought she wouldn’t see her mother and siblings again.

 When he saw her, Alan asked, “Can I hug you? Are hugs allowed now?” Daisy didn’t know why he had asked her daughter that. “Because in the jail we were, they wouldn’t let us hug each other. The ladies that took care of us said hugs were not allowed,” he told her.

Lady asked her mother if she could take her to see the Statue of Liberty. On that trip, they talked about their plans, of their life together as a family, and she said she was happy to be “free.”

Daisy asked her children,

—”Over there in jail, what did you do? How did you sleep?

 

“They gave us plastic bags for sleeping. There were many children.” Daira answered. 

 

“Was it there where you got the lice?”

 

Daira only nods and answers, 

 

“I don’t know where, mom.”

Daira sólo mueve la cabeza y responde:

—No sé dónde, mamá.

In 2005 the “Streamline” operation entered into force. It’s a program implemented at a stretch of the Texas border, specifying that all immigrants entering the United States unlawfully or in an “illegal” manner would be processed as criminals and imprisoned to expedite their trials and thus, deport them more quickly.

This initiative soon spread to other places at the border. At that time, however, exceptions were made for adults that crossed with their children or infants, and for minors and sick persons.

Under President Trump’s Administration and the “zero-tolerance” policy, the tactic to punish and terrorize families that crossed the border with their children was to separate and imprison them in detention centers (“jails”) thousands of kilometers apart. This was done while they prosecuted and criminalized the children’s mothers or fathers for seeking asylum or crossing the border “illegally.

Against a background of increasing national and international pressure, President Trump signed an executive order to stop the separation of children from their parents at the border. However, months after revoking the “zero-tolerance” policy, families are still separated at the border.

The Federal Government identified more than 2737 children separated from their parents because of this policy, and to date, more than 15 000 are not with them. 

Lady says,

Even if detention centers create jobs and generate income for local governments and private corporations, detention has irreversible harmful effects on the mental health and well-being of immigrants, their families, and communities. Detention of immigrant children is not an isolated issue. It’s part of a system and infrastructure that daily affects thousands of children confined in detention spaces, exclusively for them, in 17 states of the U.S. 

The impact and imprint left on children by immigration, deportation, family separation, imprisonment, or even the anti-immigrant narrative in the country, are unprecedented. With the separation of families, the U.S. government trusted it could dissuade people from immigrating, but, on the contrary, “the heavy-handed approach” has generated trauma and damages on the mental health of children and young adolescents, and immigrant communities.

Under the Trump administration, we find an oppressive political climate in the United States, with a furious anti-immigrant discourse and a punitive agenda. The infrastructure and machinery for the detention and imprisonment of immigrants have been reinforced and expanded through cruel measures to criminalize immigration. This reinforcement and expansion also separate fathers from their children, radically lowers the number of persons who are able to access asylum procedures and fosters massive and unprecedented incursions throughout the country and the militarization of the border.