Tag

#zero-tolerance

3 incidents

Updated June 16, 2022 Deportation to Torture
War Crime / Crime Against Humanity Ongoing

Zero Tolerance Family Separation: Systematic Removal of Children from Asylum-Seeking Parents

Attorney General Sessions announced a zero tolerance policy in April 2018 requiring criminal prosecution of all illegal border crossers. Because federal criminal custody excludes children, this automatically separated minors from their parents. Over 5,500 children were separated in six weeks. Courts ordered reunification; as of 2024, hundreds of families remain separated.

Sources
7
family-separationzero-tolerancechildrentortureimmigration
Updated October 2, 2020 Civil Rights
Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern

Zero Tolerance: 5,500+ Children Separated, HHS Lost Track of Hundreds

Zero tolerance created systematic family separation as deliberate policy — not incidentally but intentionally, with separation designed as a deterrent. The administration did not build a system to track which children belonged to which parents. A federal judge ordered reunification within 30 days; the government said it could not comply. By October 2020, the ACLU reported that 628 children had parents who still could not be found — many of whom had been deported to Central America without their children, without being told where their children were.

Sources
5
family-separationzero-tolerancechildrenimmigrationfirst-term
Updated October 30, 2020 Deportation to Torture
Critical Rights and Rule-of-Law Concern

Zero Tolerance Family Separation: 5,500+ Children Separated at the Border

The zero tolerance policy was the direct cause of mass family separations: parents were referred for criminal prosecution, children were taken to Office of Refugee Resettlement shelters, and the two systems — criminal justice and child welfare — did not have adequate mechanisms to track and reunite families. Senior administration officials including Chief of Staff John Kelly had discussed using family separation as a deterrent as early as 2017. Trump publicly and repeatedly denied a family separation policy existed while it was operating. A federal court ordered family reunification; the government struggled to comply, partly because adequate records had not been kept linking children to parents.

Sources
4
family-separationimmigrationchildrenzero-tolerancefirst-term