President Donald Trump’s policy on dividing migrant families at the border is all set to get reversed. Thousands of migrants have suffered enduring the trauma and many parents remain separated from their children.
Reversing this policy, which has met with severe criticism worldwide, must be the priority of Biden’s administration. Civil rights groups that have advocated for this cause for years, are now pressuring the President-elect Joe Biden to immediately address this issue right after his inauguration. They want a fair policy in place that will reunite the suffering families, provide protection in the country, and compensate them for their losses.
The managing attorney of Al Otro Lado, an organization that aims to find deported parents of children, has condemned President Trump’s policy. He claimed that several families hadn’t been reunited for more than three years. He added that this was an act of torture and measures should be taken to protect these families, and make sure such a policy is never introduced again.
This ‘zero tolerance’ policy was implemented by the Trump administration in April 2018. Lawsuits were filed against every migrant who crossed the border to seek refuge in America after escaping the violence in their own country. Parents and children were separated; the parents arrested and the children sent to shelters and jails.
After facing a massive global backlash, Trump reversed the policy in June 2018. However, the separation continued to happen, the US government claimed that the parents were unfair to the kids. According to the ACLU, their investigation showed that the US had separated more than 5500 children from their families in 2017.
Joe Biden has promised that he will be rescinding the policy for good, and will constitute a task force to reunite the separated families. However, advocates have urged Biden to take additional steps to compensate for the human rights violations that occurred at the border.
They believe that legal status should be granted to the families and they should be protected. In addition to this, long drawn out and extensive processes and trials should not be carried out and detention or denials shouldn’t be an option. “Compensation for psychological damage, such as PTSD and separation anxiety, should also be provided”, they added.
