David Brooks and Jim Cason
Correspondents
La Jornada Newspaper
Wednesday, December 18, 2024, p. 23
New York and Washington. In preparation for Donald Trump’s return to the White House, human rights and immigrant advocates warn of the danger that some of the cruelest measures could be implemented once again, including the forced separation of children from undocumented families – something described as a type of torture by Human Rights Watch – and detentions in places previously considered refuges, including churches, hospitals and schools.
A report by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale University documents how the policy of zero tolerance During Trump’s first presidency, he separated more than 4,600 children from their parents, and six years later, 1,360 of these minors have not been able to reunite with their families, and in fact remain missing.
For these experts, when implementing this policy, in many cases the authorities refused to reveal to parents the whereabouts of their children, which constitutes a crime under the international law of forced disappearance and, even more so, with the pain and psychological consequences, that practice may have constituted torture.
Forced family separations could have resulted in torture, defined as the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering for an inappropriate purpose by an agent of a state.says the report.
The authors of the report point out that these crimes, the result of an intentional policy, remain unpunished without any justice for the victims. “The Trump administration’s cruelty to children was deliberate. They were punishing children to send a message to parents: do not come to the United States, do not seek asylum in the United States… or else we will kidnap your children and abuse them,” summarizes Human Rights Watch. All this, he adds, demands public accountability, apology, compensation and possible criminal action.
Chilling cruelty
With the 131-page report, they indicated, they wish to present an exhaustive report of what happened and point out that no one has been held accountable for intentional damages against families. It is chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that was fueled by the policy of forced family separation.Michael Garcia Bochenek, a Human Rights Watch attorney and one of the report’s authors, told Border Report.
The text is intended to alert politicians and officials, as well as the public, of possible measures that may be implemented against migrants in the second term of a Trump government. (https://www.hrw.org/report/2024/12/16/we-need-take-away-children/zero-accountability-six-years-after-zero-tolerance).
In fact, two of the architects of the so-called politics of zero tolerance which included the separation of families in 2017 to 2021 (the separation measure was suspended by court order in 2018, but continued anyway) have already been appointed by Trump to return with him to the White House. Stephen Miller, who formulated that measure, will be Trump’s deputy chief of staff, while Tom Homan, who implemented it, has been named as the next border tsar of Trump, in charge of mass deportations.
Meanwhile, it has been documented that the Joe Biden government, on a much smaller scale and with other justifications, has separated children from their immigrant families. This year alone, this administration’s immigration authorities have separated about 300 children from their relatives or guardians, ProPublica reported. In 2023, according to an official report from Congress, 298 children suffered from this measure. Officials interviewed by ProPublica insisted that the separations under this administration do not resemble those of the Trump administration, either in character or scale. They stressed that these separations have been carried out only due to concerns about the safety of minors, or for reasons of national security (https://www.propublica.org/article/family-separations-biden-russian-immigrants).
On the other hand, the new Trump administration intends to immediately discard the policy that prohibits federal immigration authorities from detaining undocumented people on calls protected areas such as schools, churches and hospitals, NBC News reported.
That policy has been in effect since 2011 to allow undocumented immigrants to access essential services for themselves and their families without fear of arrest. Furthermore, it was argued that it was for the good of the communities – both for reasons of health, child welfare and more – that undocumented people did not go to these institutions. But now, according to sources in Trump’s transition team, this humanitarian policy will be sacrificed as part of Trump’s promise to carry out the largest deportation operation in US history. Furthermore, it would be a blow against the promoters of shrines for immigrants.
All this, one week before Christmas, which celebrates the birth of a child of refugees in a sanctuary in Palestine.