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jeff sessions
'Calculated Cruelty': Report Details Lasting Harms of Trump Family Separation Policy
Up to 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the Trump administration have not been reunited six years later, according to the new report from a trio of human rights groups.
Dec 16, 2024
A report published Monday by a coalition of human rights groups estimates that as many as 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy have yet to be reunited, causing immense suffering for families ensnared in the punitive effort to deter border crossings.
The 135-page report was produced by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, and it comes as immigrant rights advocates brace for President-elect Donald Trump's return to power alongside officials who helped develop and implement the large-scale family separations.
"Forcible separation of children from their families inflicted harms that were severe and foreseeable," states the report, which examines public and internal government documents, materials from legal proceedings, and the findings of government investigations and features interviews with parents and children who were forcibly separated by the Trump administration.
"Once parents realized they would not be immediately reunited with their children, they were distraught," the report continues. "Some children sobbed uncontrollably. Many felt abandoned. Nearly all were bewildered, not least because immigration officials would not tell them where their parents were or gave responses that proved to be lies."
The groups estimate that the first Trump administration separated more than 4,600 children from their families during its four years in power, and nearly 30% of the children are unaccounted for and "may remain separated from their parents."
"A government should never target children to send a message to parents."
While family separations predated Trump's first term and have continued under President Joe Biden, experts argue the Trump administration's policy was uniquely expansive and cruel. The groups behind the new report said the Trump administration's family separation efforts "constituted enforced disappearance and may have constituted torture."
"We need to take away children," Jeff Sessions, then Trump's attorney general, reportedly said during a May 2018 call with five federal prosecutors, the report observes, citing handwritten notes from one of the prosecutors.
Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children's rights counsel at HRW and an author of the new report, said in a statement Monday that "it's chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy."
"A government should never target children to send a message to parents," Bochenek added.
The separations traumatized both parents and children, according to the report.
"Migrant children who have been forcibly separated from their parents demonstrate greater emotional and behavioral difficulties than children who have never been separated," the report notes. "Parents repeatedly told Al Otro Lado, a legal services organization based in Tijuana, that forced separation from their children was 'the worst thing they had ever experienced' and reported 'continued disturbances in sleep, nightmares, loss of appetite, loss of interest, fear for the future, constant worry, hopelessness, and loss of the ability to concentrate.'"
"In May 2018," the report adds, "a man killed himself after [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] agents forcibly separated him from his children."
HRW, TCRP, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic called on Congress and the Biden administration to "put in place comprehensive measures to remedy the wrongs these families suffered" and urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—soon to be led by far-right South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem—to "adopt standards that presumptively keep families together, separating them only when in a child's best interest."
Trump campaigned during the 2024 election on a pledge to launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and he said during an interview aired last week that "we don't have to separate families."
"We'll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came," Trump said, suggesting he'll also deport children who are U.S. citizens.
When pressed on whether he intends to revive the "zero tolerance" policy, Trump said, "We need deterrence."
"When somebody comes here illegally, they're going out. It's very simple," he added. "Now if they come here illegally but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out, or they can all go out together."
The ACLU, which has represented separated families in court, has pledged to take swift legal action if the incoming Trump administration brings back "zero tolerance."
"I am hopeful that the Trump administration recognized the outpouring from the American public and the worldwide revulsion to ripping little children away from their parents and will not try to separate families again," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt toldTIME magazine last month. "But if it does we will be back in court immediately."
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Advocates Cheer DOJ Reversal of Trump Policy Denying Asylum to Victims of Violence
"Now it's time to build on this progress," said one migrant rights campaigner. "We're ready to work with the administration to create an asylum system that provides every person a fair opportunity to apply for protection."
Jun 16, 2021
Immigrant rights advocates hailed the Wednesday reversal by U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland of a Trump-era rule denying asylum in the United States to victims of domestic or gang violence as a "critically important" step toward restoring the right of refuge to migrants fleeing countries where their lives are often in danger.
"This was the right move. We are thrilled for our client and for the many deserving individuals fleeing persecution who will have a fair chance to seek refuge in the United States."
--Karen Musalo, CGRS
In a pair of decisions, Garland vacated a 2018 guidance from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that declared migrants would no longer automatically qualify for asylum if they presented concerns of domestic abuse or gang violence in their home countries.
Later that year, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. struck down much of the contentious Justice Department guidance, calling it "arbitrary, capricious," and unlawful.
According to the New York Times, Wednesday's decision involves the cases of two asylum-seeking Salvadoran women known as A-B- and L-E-A-. In 2016 and 2017, the Justice Department's Board of Immigration Appeals ruled that the women qualified for asylum since the government of El Salvador did not adequately protect people suffering domestic abuse.
A 2020 Human Rights Watch investigation found that at least 138 people deported from the United States to El Salvador since 2013 were killed, and that at least 70 others were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, or tortured. Many of the victims were murdered or harmed by the gangs they originally fled.
However, Sessions overruled the board's decision regarding A-B; his successor, William Barr, responded similarly to the board's finding in L-E-A-'s case.
\u201c\u201cAttorney General Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday reversed a Trump-era immigration ruling that made it all but impossible for people to seek asylum in the United States over credible fears of domestic abuse or gang violence.\u201d\n\nThis is critically important. https://t.co/s771mU7g3q\u201d— The Leadership Conference (@The Leadership Conference) 1623881019
"These decisions involve important questions about the meaning of our nation's asylum laws, which reflect America's commitment to providing refuge to some of the world's most vulnerable people," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta wrote on Wednesday in a memo to the Justice Department's Civil Division.
Migrant advocates hailed news of the DOJ policy reversal.
"This was the right move. We are thrilled for our client and for the many deserving individuals fleeing persecution who will have a fair chance to seek refuge in the United States," Karen Musalo, director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS) and co-counsel in Matter of A-B-, said in a statement.
"Now it's time to build on this progress," she added. "We're ready to work with the administration to create an asylum system that provides every person a fair opportunity to apply for protection, in line with our human rights obligations."
\u201cThis is an important move in the right direction.\n\nToday\u2019s announcement will help undo some of the damage caused by the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on asylum.\u201d— ACLU (@ACLU) 1623881363
Bradley Jenkins, federal litigation attorney at the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC) and one of the lawyers representing L-E-A-, said that "families facing persecution qualify for asylum under any reasonable interpretation of the law, and it is encouraging to see Attorney General Garland take this step toward restoring the asylum system."
"We hope that the rule-making process will result in further progress toward a fair and humane asylum policy," he added.
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DOJ Rescinds Trump-Era Policy Denying Grant Money to Sanctuary Cities
The move targeted a May 2017 directive requiring recipients of a $250 million law enforcement grant pool to cooperate with immigration authorities.
Apr 28, 2021
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month rescinded a Trump administration policy that denied hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants to law enforcement agencies in sanctuary jurisdictions, Reutersrevealed Wednesday.
The news agency viewed an internal Justice Department memo sent by Maureen Henneberg, acting head of the Office of Justice Programs, revoking a May 2017 directive from then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions that limited $250 million in federal funding for law enforcement to states, counties, and municipalities that cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Henneberg's memo instructs DOJ employees to "pull down and revise all solicitations that describe requirements or priority consideration elements or criteria pertaining to immigration."
The memo also orders DOJ staff to rescind any pending grant applications conditioned upon cooperation with ICE. "These solicitations will be reposted and grantees will be required to reapply," she wrote.
\u201cDOJ confirms Reuters exclusive that Biden has revoked an order limiting so-called sanctuary cities from millions in grants for refusing to cooperate with ICE. @Law360\u201d— Sarah Betancourt (@Sarah Betancourt) 1619623241
Garland ordered department officials to implement the new policy on April 14, according to Reuters. The move followed President Joe Biden's signing of an executive order overturning one of Trump's first directives, an order aimed at pressuring jurisdictions into cracking down on undocumented immigration.
The DOJ's Community-Oriented Policing website states that "grant-making components issued revised guidance on April 22, 2021 regarding conditions on certain department grants," and that consistent with Biden's executive order and Garland's April 14 directive, "DOJ informed grant recipients and applicants that they will continue receiving certain department grants."
Numerous states and cities sued the DOJ over the grant prohibition policy. Last February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in favor of the Trump administration, setting up a potential U.S. Supreme Court showdown that was averted by Biden's election. Last month, the DOJ urged the Supreme Court to dismiss pending sanctuary city cases.
Former President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" immigration policies targeting undocumented migrants and refugees and the communities that offered them sanctuary coincided with a broader campaign against progressive cities that included designating New York, Seattle, and Portland, Oregon "anarchist jurisdictions."
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