Hundreds of American children were separated from their families at the border by Trump. Some have not been reunited

The zero-tolerance policy of the Donald Trump Administration not only separated migrant children from their families at the border with Mexico, but also minors who had US citizenship, according to a report by The New York Times on Tuesday. 

Lawyers and immigrant advocates who are working with the Joe Biden administration to reunite families revealed to the newspaper that they estimate hundreds of citizen children, possibly up to 1,000, were taken away from their parents.

At the moment, information on this problem is scarce, they pointed out. 

“The US government is just beginning to account for the number of American citizens who have endured this unimaginable trauma,” said Paige Chan, executive director of the nonprofit Together and Free and a member of the federal team formed to reunify families. 

In many cases, these minors were placed in foster homes for long periods of time.

Some of them even got lost in the system and have yet to be reunited with their parents, five years after the policy was applied in 2018.

“

, and whether or not they know where their children are,” Chan said. 

Most of the children were citizens, experts explain, because

to immigrant parents.

Their families at some point returned to their countries of origin with them, but then decided to cross the border again to escape poverty and violence in Central America and Mexico, and were detained. 

Some families were immediately reunited after a judge struck down the zero-tolerance policy in June 2018, but others went years without seeing each other.

Eric Gay/AP

With a zero tolerance policy, the Trump government criminally prosecuted migrants who arrived in the country illegally and consequently separated adults who were accompanied by their minor children.

It had a few pilot programs, one in El Paso, Texas, and another in Yuma, Arizona, and was officially implemented from April to June 2018, when a judge ordered it stopped.

Nearly 5,500 children born abroad were separated.

Most of them spent weeks away from their families, although in some cases it was months.

They were of different nationalities and ages, with hundreds of them under 5 years of age.

Until February of this year, there were still almost 1,000 minors who had not been reunited with their parents. 

Angelo Fernández, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed to the newspaper that there are an unspecified number of US citizen children who were caught up in these border separations and that the task force was "reviewing the records" to identify them.

under another system 

Citizen children did not have any advantage due to their legal status, experts indicated, but on the contrary, their status may have worked against them, since being Americans they were under the supervision of state child welfare authorities, which made it more complex the follow-up of the cases.

At the state level, in addition, the family courts were the ones who decided what to do with these minors, applying different criteria and without a unified system. 

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The foreign children, instead, were taken to refugees from the Federal Refugee Resettlement Office, where at some point they were added to federal databases and given the opportunity to speak with their parents by phone.

Six months without Yeisvi

Citizen children, immigration lawyers explained, could not be rushed to their parents' placement, as they had to go through state bureaucracies for foster care or, in some cases, their parents had to fight in court for the custody. 

This was the case of Vilma Carrillo, who was separated at the Arizona border from her daughter Yeisvi, who is an American and was 11 years old at the time.

Carrillo recalled in an interview with The New York Times that she watched immigration officials call one mother after another to reunite with her children while she was detained in Georgia, and they never called her.

Later, she was told that her daughter had been placed in foster care because she was American. 

[Study Equates Trauma Suffered by Migrant Parents and Children Separated by Trump to Torture]

He was able to meet with her more than

, after a legal aid organization filed a lawsuit on his behalf.

They now live together in the United States.

With deported parents

The situation of US minors was even more difficult when the parents had been deported to their countries of origin.

“Theoretically, a state dependency court would determine whether it is in the best interest of the child to reunite with a parent, even if the parent has been deported or faces imminent deportation,” said Carlos Holguin, an attorney who has represented thousands of immigrant children in federal custody.

On the other hand, if a judge decides not to return a child to a migrant parent and there is no US relative available, the child can be placed in foster care until they turn 18, Holguin said.

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Parents of US citizens are not automatically allowed to stay in the US: their children, after turning 21, must sponsor them to be issued a green card. 

When will they be reunited?

Because official records are scattered and incomplete, it will take months for the government to review additional files to identify estranged parents and children and then try to determine their whereabouts in the United States or abroad, said several immigrant advocates who have worked along with the Department of Homeland Security.

Leecia Welch, deputy director of litigation for Children's Rights, which litigates cases involving children at the border, said the discovery of so many US citizen children added a new challenge to an already complex job of reuniting families. 

“

, you hear new facts that underscore the horror of this policy,” he said.

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16, 202103:01

Chan said his organization was aware of at least 226 American children who had been referred to the child protective services agency in San Diego County, California.

But there are no records of separate children placed in foster homes in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. 

A policy that outraged the country 

The Trump administration justified the policy at the time by saying it was an attempt to deter the thousands of parents who officials say were endangering their children by taking them on dangerous trips to the border. 

By law, children can be separated from their parents for their own protection, for example, when their mothers give birth while incarcerated, or when there has been abuse or neglect by the parents.

However, images and audio of children pleading for their parents to be forcibly separated shocked the country, causing outrage, and the policy was rescinded. 

The Department of Homeland Security formally ended the practice of separating children from their parents after crossing the border irregularly after Biden's arrival at the White House.

And one of the objectives of the new government has been to reunite the families that Trump separated

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Parents and children have reported mistreatment and more punitive than protective behavior by US officials.

When parents arrived in the United States, they said, immigration authorities forcibly removed their children from their arms or transferred them to other facilities while their children slept.

In some cases, children "disappeared" while their parents were in court or receiving medical care.

They gave them no explanation as to why they were being separated and if or how they would see them again.

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Reunited families have been eligible for federally funded mental health services.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is calling for American children to be included in these programs as well. 

“This is about the

,” Mark Rosenbaum, an attorney with Public Counsel, a public interest law office that has represented separated families, told the newspaper.