Family Separation–Here We Go Again!

As the nation is focused on COVID-19, the U.S. government has aggressively begun to rush the deportations of some of the most vulnerable migrant children in its care to countries where they have been raped, beaten or had a parent killed, according to attorneys, court filings and congressional staff.

“We’ve said it before and we repeat again now: Family separation is reprehensible. Societies are judged by how we treat the least in our communities, and that also includes the very youngest and the elderly. COVID-19 has laid bare long-existing injustices in our society. We must stand for others as never before, so that we emerge and move forward from this time as a better, more just society.”

Ten year-old Gerson was deported to Honduras, alone , after attempting to request asylum in the United States while his mother waited, distressed and panicked, in Mexico. She had sent him forward hoping he had a better chance of gaining safety in the U.S. on his own, and would eventually be allowed to stay with an uncle in Houston. Instead, the young boy was deported in less than a week, “confused about how he had ended up back in the dangerous place he fled.”

A Honduran boy is hiding in a relative’s home after being deported, while his mother remains stuck in Mexico seeking asylum. The pandemic halted travel for her, but not her son’s deportation flight. He is unsafe in Honduras , having been abused for his sexual orientation.

Despite having an adult brother who begged to take care of her in North Carolina, a sixteen year-old girl was deported to Guatemala after being shuttled from hotel to hotel across the United States, in the government’s attempt to keep her away from her lawyers. From the Los Angeles Times : Her brother was not even allowed to speak with his sister over the phone before she was deported. He wanted to tell her “I miss you a lot.”

Two girls, who fled for their lives after persecution and abuse ages 8 and 11, were nearly deported by themselves to El Salvador, where they have no one, despite the fact that their mother is alive and able to care for them in Houston.

Fourteen year-old Jenny has been living in a New York shelter while her immigration case works its way through the courts. Her father was murdered in Honduras and her mother is stuck in Mexico due to Trump’s crackdown on asylum-seekers. Jenny would have no one to take care of her in Honduras. Yet the government still came to her shelter in May and tried to deport her, until they were blocked by a federal court order.

Asylum seeking migrants, adults and  children , continue to be deported to unsafe conditions and without adequate COVID-19 testing. For more information on the U.S. government’s immoral exercise of power over children and families seeking safety, read “The Flores Settlement and Family Separation at the Border,” a new paper from the Women’s Refugee Commission.

In grateful partnership for justice,

Rev. Dr. Sharon Stanley-Rea

Director, Refugee & Immigration Ministries