Talk:Trump administration family separation policy

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 August 2021 and 18 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Sunflower0914.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 04:28, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

New Source

Major article by the Atlantic on the history of the policy if someone wants to incorporate the information Atlantic article. Remember (talk) 12:47, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Wow, what a good find. This will indeed provide good follow-up. I have read only the first chapter so far but will slowly go through it all. There is a lot to cover. I am user Gandydancer so have been with this article from its very beginning and rambling through month after month. And it does ramble, but trying to do cut-backs is so hard when when one thinks of those little kids wailing and crying out "papa" on that tape--it makes every word seem important... Reading farther back into the history of this practice in this Atlantic article reminds me that this WP article while now seemingly old remains an important part of U.S. politics and even what's going on around the world today. For now, Gandy Sectionworker (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

OK, I quickly lost my limits on Atlantic access and will need to find interviews, etc.--which should not be a problem. She was on PBS last night and several talk shows lately. This is one of the longest articles they've ever done and they tend to do pretty long ones. Rather than trying to tuck this in here and there I'm going to add it at the end in a 2022 update. Since so few people read or work on this article I'm going to feel free to add what I find a little at a time rather than feel that I need to have it all worked out before I add stuff. Gandy, Sectionworker (talk) 21:35, 14 August 2022 (UTC)

story won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize, btw. nice find. 162.83.150.120 (talk) 13:11, 18 December 2023 (UTC)

Article contradiction

Hello! I'm worried about this paragraph, specifically the segments in bold, which, as I see it, contradict each other, so I'm about to change it, but in case anyone was wondering why, I wanted to put my reasoning here:

Prior to the Trump administration, the U.S. government did not actively pursue criminal cases for illegal entry, and thus U.S. authorities did not routinely separate migrant parents from their children. Rather, previous administrations used either family detention facilities (allowing families to remain intact pending deportation hearings in civil immigration court) or alternatives to detention (e.g., release pending further hearings). Prior to the Trump administration, families traveling together were generally only separated under narrow circumstances, such as suspicion of human trafficking, an outstanding warrant, or fraud.
President George W. Bush began the trend of a "zero tolerance" approach in 2005 with Operation Streamline, under which a significant number of criminal prosecutions for illegal entry (a misdemeanor) were pursued; however, during his administration, exceptions were generally made for adults traveling with minors.

To be clear: it's obviously true that the United States did not generally separate families prior to Trump, and the sources confirm that. But the first bolded portion speaks of all "criminal cases"—not just criminal cases against persons traveling with families, and, as I see it, the second bolded portion contradicts it.

Moreover, and more importantly, at least one of the sources used seems to contradict the first bolded portion. This AP article (which is cited) says:

For decades the government didn’t actively pursue criminal cases under Section 1325, which has been on the books since 1929. Those caught were deported by immigration enforcement.
It wasn’t until a 2005 program started by President George W. Bush, vowing to curb illegal immigration, that the number of criminal prosecutions soared.

--Jerome Frank Disciple 13:11, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

New source on the state of reunification in 2024

Major new article in New York Magazine looking at reunification efforts:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/separated-families-border-trump-zero-tolerance-immigration.html

It includes lots of updated information that would be worth including in this article. Owunsch (talk) 03:06, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

Totals unknown.

Although we will probably never know exactly how many children were ruthlessly removed from their families with no plan to reunited them and completely inadequate record-keeping in place, the above cited NY Magazine article states:

Out of more than 5,000 children separated from their parents by the Trump administration, as many as 2,000 still haven’t been reunited. These figures are estimates at best; three years into a new presidency, it appears likely the U.S. government will never be able to provide a thorough accounting of the policy’s victims. The damage grows with every year that passes: Separated parents have been murdered after being deported, and others have vanished during another attempt to cross the border. [my emphasis]

It further states that an outreach website had been set up where families not previously recorded in the trump totals cropped up.

Wordreader (talk) 03:45, 24 November 2024 (UTC)