The United States is planning to hold almost 30,000 children separated from their parents and guardians at the nation's border by the end of August. The child separation incident has now led to a huge criticism of the Trump administration.
The Department of Health and Human Services has been holding 250 children per day in recent weeks to offer them shelter as they have been separated from their families, a senior administration official confirmed on Friday. The department also claimed that it will continue the process for at least the next two months to take care of the children left behind by illegal immigrant parents.
The child separation policy seems to be the continuation of the Lateral Repatriation policy that was initiated by ex-President Barack Obama in 2008. The Alien Transfer Exit Program (ATEP), as it is commonly called, focused on the detention of Mexican male immigrants. In the process, if the immigrant was found crossing the US border without verification and proper documentation, they were either detained or taken to another segment of the US-Mexico border.
The program only focused on the detention of the male members, which led to the separation of the families and kids from the illegal immigrants. Though the detainees were flown to Mexican borders, they were left far off where they actually hailed from. Their families, on the other hand, were deported to the original destination they attempted to reach.
Obama no way different
Obama's Lateral Repatriation program was slammed extensively by immigrants' rights activists as the process led to the break-up of families. They advocated that Mexican males were accompanied by their families and the former's detention left their wives, partners, kids, and old parents behind in immigrant detention centres, which were mostly located in Texas or Pennsylvania. Despite huge criticisms, the former US president made the ATEP more active in 2011 as the attempts of illegal entrance into the nation highly increased.
Whether it's the Trump administration that has decided to hold the kids and provide them shelter or Obama-led ATEP program that separated families from the immigrant male members, the trauma that the members left behind go through is unimaginable.
Will this holding back really lessen the pain of the kids? What do you think?
