Separated families: Biden reunification program seeks to undo Trump border policy

May 4, 2021 ☼ separationimmigration

Source: The Washington Post - Link

Three years, seven months and four days after U.S. immigration agents separated her from her child, Sandra Ortíz was walking through the San Ysidro border crossing Tuesday when she spotted Bryan Chávez.

“My son!” she cried. “I missed you so much!”

They held each other quietly in the center of the pedestrian plaza, the frenzy of the border a blur around them.

Ortíz and Chávez were among the thousands of families separated by the Trump administration in 2017 and 2018 under a policy intended to deter migration. Now they were among the first reunited under the Biden administration — the start of a massive relocation of parents deported by one U.S. president and returned by another. In total, more than 1,000 families are expected to be reunited.

The separation policy at the scale that the Trump administration practiced was inhumane. Undoing it is just. It doesn’t mean that there is never a case for separation. Sometimes it is the correct thing to do for child protection.