Separated Border Children May Never See Parents Again!

More than 500 separated border children are orphaned from their parents — perhaps permanently.

Current Events
In 2017, the Donald Trump administration implemented the “El Paso” pilot program designed to deter undocumented immigrants from crossing the border into the US. The program grew in 2018 under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions and was rebuked for separating children from their parents as punishment for families illegally crossing the border. Originally, the Trump administration argued that the separations would only be temporary. However, once the practice of taking parents to one processing facility and children to another began, all bets were off and the system became convoluted.

Now, the US Justice Department has admitted in a Tuesday court ruling that it lost track of at least 545 separated border children who were taken from their families by US border officials between 2017 and 2018. In fact, they fear they will never be able to reunite the children with their actual parents.

At the request of the American Civil Liberties Union, the US Justice Department set out to identify and reunite families separated by Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy more than 2 years after it was created. A federal court order forced the reunification of separated border children with their families, however, the Justice Dept. was forced to admit that hundreds of parents were very likely deported without their children. Although a court-appointed committee was charged with locating the missing families, they’ve concluded that they’re unable to reunite 545 separated border children with their real parents.

This means there are 545 infants, toddlers, children, and teens at the US border who are still living in cages and will never see their birth parents again.

“Following a suspension due to the COVID-19 pandemic, limited physical on-the-ground searches for separated parents has now resumed where possible to do so while protecting the health of personnel working with the Steering Committee and members of vulnerable communities in separated parents’ home countries,” the court filing revealed.

“Even before Covid, it was hard enough finding these families but we will not stop until we’ve found everyone,” said ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt. “Some of these children have been separated for years and were just babies at the time.”

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Separated border children can’t find their parents.