Two days after a court-imposed deadline, the Trump administration said Thursday that just 57 of more than 100 children under the age of 5 have been reunited with their parents after they were separated at the border under the “zero tolerance” policy. This comes as the Trump administration has announced a new asylum policy at the US-Mexico border, which instructs immigration officers to immediately reject asylum seekers who say they are fleeing gangs or domestic violence. We’re joined by Renée Feltz, Democracy Now! correspondent and producer who has long reported on the criminalization of immigrants, family detention, and the business of detention. Her new story for The Nation, reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute, is headlined “For Some Migrant Families, a Second Separation Awaits.”
TRANSCRIPT
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AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman. This is Democracy Now! Two days after a court-imposed deadline, the Trump administration said Thursday that just 57 of the 103 children under the age of 5 have been reunited with their parents, after they were separated at the border under the “zero tolerance” policy. Officials said they could not reunite the other 46 children because their parents have been accused of crimes, because the children weren’t related to the people they were separated from, or, in at least a dozen cases, because US immigration authorities had already deported their parents. In total, about 3,000 separated children are in detention centers and facilities across the United States. A judge has ordered all separated children reunited with their parents by July 26. Some migrant parents who have been released from detention say they’ve been unable to reunite with their children because of bureaucratic hurdles.
On Wednesday, Democracy Now!’s Laura Gottesdiener spoke with a Honduran mother who had been separated from her two children at the border. After being…