Family Separation Isn’t New

For the past few months, images of distressed migrant children have populated American newsfeeds and television screens. Many of the children are the victims of “family separation,” their parents deported from the U.S. without them; while detained without their parents, some of them have been forbidden from being hugged. The Trump administration has defended family separation, then backtracked on the policy, then started to reunite families at the order of a federal judge.

This ever-shifting “zero-tolerance” policy of the Trump Administration—which has mandated that all adult migrants crossing the border without papers be criminally prosecuted—has sharpened focus on the border and the detention centers migrants have been held in. For the first time in the of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), says Lilia Soto, a professor of American studies at the University of Wyoming, national audiences saw—and heard audio recordings of from their parents. “It’s not something that’s happening clandestinely,” Soto says.