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As the US readies itself for a second Trump presidency, human rights defenders are still seeking justice for crimes committed under the first one.
Arguably the most notable set of abuses last time happened under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy of forcibly separating children from their families at the US border. When photos leaked of children put in cages and stories emerged of kids as young as five detained without adult caregivers, the scandal shook the country.
The US government separated more than 4,600 children from their parents between 2017 and 2021.
What’s perhaps even more shocking is, of those 4,600, 1,360 children remain unaccounted for to this day. Even after six years, the government has not been able to reunite these kids with their parents.
A new report by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School examines the policy and its impacts. It also sets out the specific crimes committed, in particular from the standpoint of international law.
The government refused, in many cases for days or weeks, to disclose the circumstances and whereabouts of separated children to their parents, which meets the definition of an enforced disappearance. Forcible family separations may also have constituted torture.
No one was ever held accountable for these crimes, and there’s been no justice for the victims.
It’s critical to remember this was an intentional policy, not a bunch of mistakes or unfortunate consequences of authorities trying to do something else. The Trump administration’s cruelty to children was deliberate. They were punishing kids to send a message to parents: don’t come to the US, don’t apply for asylum in the US – or else we’ll kidnap your children and abuse them.
“We need to take away children,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a call to prosecutors in May 2018.
A June 2018 court order halted the government’s effort to systematically separate every family that entered the United States without authorization. But the court order allowed separations on other grounds, and the government continued to separate hundreds of children through the end of 2019.
The entire episode demands a public accounting, an apology, compensation, and possible criminal prosecutions. At the very least, the US Senate, in hearings on Trump’s nominations of incoming officials, should reject any who were involved in family separation.
No one knows exactly what will happen during Trump’s second administration. But in any case, there needs to be a full reckoning with the serious human rights violations of the first one.
