The Trump Administration Is Quietly Bringing Back Child Separations, An Enormously Divisive Policy From First Term: Report

The Trump administration is stepping up its efforts to pressure migrants to leave the U.S. on their own, even going as far as to quietly use once again one of the most explosive tactics of the first Trump term in several instances across the country.

A recent investigation by The New York Times revealed at least nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders. Over the past months, officials have employed this tactic in small numbers so as to not raise alarm in what has been described as a more targeted version of Trump's first term policies.

The recent practice is not as widespread as the "zero tolerance" policy of Trump's first term, when thousands of children were systematically taken from their parents as they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border and sent to shelters and foster homes.

But the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come to the U.S. unlawfully, according to The Times.

That was the case of Evgeny and Evgeniia, a couple who fled Russia with their 8-year-old child, seeking political asylum. They were taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody earlier this year, where they faced an excruciating choice: have the whole family return to their native Russia, or remain in the U.S., but their son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children.

They were officially separated on May 15 after the couple insisted they could not go back to Russia, where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family. The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was in a room at Kennedy International Airport in New York City as ICE agents led them back to detention in New Jersey.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, insisted that "ICE does not separate families" and placed the onus on the families themselves, saying that the parents have the option of staying with their children by leaving the country altogether.

"The parents had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not comply," she said.

The Trump administration is no stranger to family separations. During the first Trump term, immigration agents would separate families at the southern border as they crossed into the U.S. Adults were criminally charged with illegally entering the country and imprisoned, while their children– some of them babies— were taken away.

That policy was enormously divisive. Gut-wrenching images of children being pried from their parents' arms enraged the country, and even international nations. But the administration privately said that was the whole point, the Times reports— the policy was meant to deter people from making the journey to the U.S. Eventually, they would succumb to global pressures, ending the policy in 2018.

Previous administrations have also separated undocumented families for reasons including national security concerns, public safety and child endangerment. But Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, said that previous administrations, to her knowledge, did not use the threat of family separation as leverage to get people to leave the country.

"I'm not aware of ICE previously using family separation as a consequence for failure to comply," with deportation orders, she said.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration maintains it is simply enforcing the law.

"To be clear, refusing a judge's deportation order is a crime," McLaughlin said. "If law enforcement pulled an American citizen over with kids in the back seat and they chose to not comply with lawful orders, the parents would be arrested, and the children would be placed in safe custody."