Which Law Or Policy Keeps Immigrant Children Apart From Their Parents?

Since early May, 2,342 children have been separated from their parents after crossing the Southern U.S. border due to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. The policy directed Border Patrol agents to separate young children from their families as their parents were tried in a 1997 court decision known as the Flores settlement. The Biden administration and more than 4,000 migrants who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration reached a settlement.

The U.S. government has agreed to compensate thousands of migrant families forced apart at the southern border in 2017 and 2018 as part of the settlement. The settlement says migrant families cannot be separated at the border for the next eight years, a policy of the Trump administration. Around 1,000 children have been separated from their parents at the southern border.

The American Bar Association strongly opposes the government’s policy of forcibly separating minor children from their parents when crossing the border. The Trump administration’s family separation policy was presented to the public as a “zero tolerance” approach intended to deter illegal immigration. However, the American Bar Association does not specify upon what legal basis the administration could lawfully separate families at the border as a component of its immigration policies.

The Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy separated over 5000 children from their parents, with no tracking process or tracking process. This policy or practice of separating families at the border as an immigration deterrent is an impermissible infringement on due process.