“Never again,” we said after almost 5,000 children were separated from their families

Now,something even bigger and more horrific is on the drawing board

Some children when reunited with parents were so traumatized as to be non-responsive.

True story: A small girl stands, unmoving, arms limp at her side. Her crying mother is embracing her, but the child’s eyes and face remain vacant.

This is not a Disney family reunification.  

Four years after Donald Trump’s first administration deliberately used family separation as an immigration control tool, this mother and child were reunited.

This traumatized child and her family, like too many others, may never be the same.

“Before 2005, federal judges and prosecutors had tacitly agreed to leave migrants alone, except in high-profile cases. People picking crops for under-the-table wages were not a principal concern for most Americans; overworked U.S. attorneys preoccupied with major drug- and weapons-smuggling cases viewed border crossing as a minor infraction not worth their time.” — The Atlantic

2015 - 2016 were immigration crisis years - fueled by government upheavals, and violence in Europe, as well as the severe drought in Central America that drove refugees north in great numbers. Trump was elected during the rising fears about the security of our border and the rapid increase in asylum seekers.

In 2016, Trump campaigned on “fixing” immigration and building a border wall; when he won, he made border control a major priority. “Zero Tolerance” was born with the idea of arresting every person who crossed the border without authorization. Tom Homan (now nominated as the new “border czar”) was the head of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and played a large role in developing the plan to separate families.

His justification was that when migrating people heard that they might lose their children, it would discourage them from heading north. What they didn’t seem to understand was that families threatened with starvation and violence didn’t have other options. They were desperate enough to try anything to protect their families.

Deliberate separation of families never slowed the traffic, however, it did become a method of torturing and traumatizing children. Years later, some children are still not reunited with their parents because the “Zero Tolerance” program completely bungled the handling of the children. They didn’t even make a spreadsheet to track children and their parents.

The new Trump administration now wants to implement a mass deportation on an unthinkable scale.

In 2017 when his first administration broke with history and decided to separate families, they did it quietly, out of sight. We now know some of the trauma that plan caused and they’re making their next plans ever bigger and, thinking they have a mandate, they are saying it out loud.

When asked about the cost of this plan and the idea of separating families, Homan said families would be deported together. Does he know that many migrant families have American born children … citizens? Of course he does! Click here to watch video.

Tom Homan Defends Mass Deportation Cost | The View

We have no excuse if we do nothing.

Video: One Separated Family’s Reunion: this is short but truly hard to watch.

This tragic program might have gone on longer except for the work of investigative journalists. Here are just two of the journalist heroes of this heartbreaking story:

Propublica published this video of the sound of separated children crying. Warning: it’s hard to listen to. However, it woke people up and helped bring the program to a stop. We need to be acting now to prevent what’s being planned.

“Trump-administration officials insisted for a whole year

that family separations weren’t happening.”

Caitlin Dickerson’s Pulitzer Prize winning story in The Atlantic: “The secret history of the U.S. government’s family-separation policy, We need to take away children.”

This is a long, frustrating story of unintended consequences created by bad decisions, weak employees bowing down to incompetent leaders and going around knowledgeable experts.

This series on the planned mass deportation will go on until … well, I’m not sure how long it’s going to take … maybe until the democratic end of this administration. These posts will always be free; however, I hope you will find ways to support independent journalists. We need them.