Trump Administration Returns to Family Separation Policies

 

Federal agents at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark, N.J., in June. Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

‘Interior separation is approved’

	by Jess Bidgood and Hamed Aleaziz

It was one of the most explosive policies of President Trump’s first term: the systematic separation of migrant children from their parents as the families crossed into the United States from Mexico.

Now, a more targeted version of that practice is back, far from the border.

My colleague Hamed Aleaziz, who covers immigration, found at least nine casesin which migrant parents already in the country were separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders. “Interior separation is approved,” officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement wrote in one case.

Officials denied that there was any new policy on family separations. They told Hamed that parents had the option of staying with their children by leaving the country with them.

Today, I called Hamed, who told me the effort represented a new front in the administration’s effort to persuade as many people as it could to leave the country.

JB: You spoke with several parents who have been separated from their children in recent months, all of whom were in ICE custody. What did they tell you?

HA: They expressed anguish, first and foremost, at being separated from their kids. They were still coming to grips with this idea that they were not with their children — and that there weren’t any prospects of being with their children anytime soon.

One thing that stuck with me was a father who told me he blamed himself for being separated from his child. He said that he’d had a nice life in Russia, and that he’d ruined it by being a dissident. He said that he had brought his family to the United States, and that, ultimately, the reason he wasn’t with his child was because of his decisions.