WHITE PAPER March 2019 Beyond the Border: Family Separation in the Trump Era In the spring of 2018, America witnessed the implementation of Inside what many observers denounced as Up to Six Million American an immoral and inhumane de facto Children at Risk ............................................................3 * The Sources of Risk to family separation policy. The policy American Children .....................................................6 resulted in nearly 3,000 children The Revival of Worksite Enforcement Actions ...........................................9 being forcibly separated from State and Local Entanglement in parents on the southern border.1 Federal Immigration Enforcement ..............10 A New Tool: Use of the Legal Immigration Despite a court order requiring the reunification of System to Disrupt Unity ...................................14 these families, as of August 2018, more than 500 The Specific Harms to children had not been reunited with their parents. American Children ................................................... 17 Court records revealed that a significant number Economic Deprivation....................................... 17 of parents were deported without their child after Educational Disruption .................................... 23 being misled by immigration authorities.2 The Trump Reduced Access to the Safety Net: Nutrition and Health ......................................... 27 administration’s so-called “zero-tolerance” policy Threats to Public Safety ................................... 31 has rightfully caused national outrage and mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans to protest Conclusion and Recommendations ................33 across the nation. Few people realize, however, that the border family separation crisis is only the tip of an immense iceberg. * This white paper was researched and written by Carlos Guevara, Senior Policy Advisor for the UnidosUS Immigration Policy Project. Special thanks and gratitude to the following members of the UnidosUS Policy team and other partners who made significant contributions to this report: Clarissa Martinez De Castro, Deputy Vice President, Policy and Advocacy; Charles Kamasaki, Senior Cabinet Advisor; Gabriela Montell, former Communications Manager; Sarah D’Adamo, Instructional Staff, Johns Hopkins University and McMaster University PhD Candidate; Christina Texidor, former Immigration Policy Intern; David Thomsen, former Health Policy Analyst; Lanette Garcia, Health Policy Analyst; Rebeca Shackleford, Data and Impact Manager; Stephanie Román, Senior Policy Analyst; Agatha So, Housing Policy Analyst; Samantha Vargas-Poppe, former Director, Policy Analysis Center; Kelly Isaac, Design and Brand Manager; and John Marth, Content Manager. Beyond the Border: Family Separation in the Trump Era Millions of U.S.-citizen children are at risk of being separated from their parents every day because of the policies put in place and enacted by the Trump administration. By some estimates, between 4.1 million and 5.7 million U.S.-citizen children live with an undocumented resident, and about 475,000 U.S.-citizen children could be impacted if their parents lose legal protections under the DACA and TPS programs. UnidosUS President and CEO Janet Murguía articulated the nature and severity of the threats these children face in the current environment in her keynote address at the 2018 UnidosUS Annual Conference: From day one, [President Trump] has lied to the American people. Rather than target criminals, this president has militarized immigration enforcement that hurts our children and rips our families apart. [In June], I and hundreds of others demonstrated outside a tent city in Tornillo, Texas. I saw firsthand the impact of our nation’s policies on those families. And I will tell you this, separating children from their parents is barbaric. It is an ungodly act disguised in the rhetoric of our national interest. As a country, we’ve been down this road before. At the core of nearly every stain on American history is the ethnic segregation of people and the separation of families: slavery, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the forced assimilation of American Indian children, the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II—they too were justified as in our national interest. They too shame our national conscience. But, what is happening at the border to families seeking refuge is just the tip of the iceberg of what is happening to Latino families all across the country. Nearly six million American children live with an undocumented parent. Six million. Both the president’s zero-tolerance, and mass deportation policies put every one of those children at risk. Imagine the trauma of living every single minute, of every hour, of every day in fear that your parents will be taken from you—that the next letter in the mail will demand that your mom appear at a deportation hearing—that the next phone call will be from your dad, who instead of coming home from work is calling to say goodbye because the plant where he works just got raided. I have seen the faces of children whose parents were taken—right in front of them. I have heard them cry for a parent uncertain whether they will ever see them again. It is not something you can un-see. These are not criminals. They are not gang members. They are just little girls and boys. With every stroke of the president’s pen, more children are put at risk: One-quarter of the 700,000 DREAMers are parents who have U.S.-citizen children. When the president chooses to end DACA, he is separating families from their children. TPS holders from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti—many of them in this country for almost two decades— now have nearly 300,000 U.S. children. When the president decides to end TPS, he is separating families from their children. His assault is on us. In the politics of demonization, Donald Trump is Joe McCarthy, George Wallace, and Pete Wilson all rolled into one. Now, the president may not mind such a comparison because he fancies himself a strong leader. But how strong is it to hurt and traumatize children? As Murguía’s comments illustrate, over time of immigrants of color.3 Furthermore, the Trump administration’s immigration through its administrative policies, the policies have become progressively more Trump administration is also upending a severe. With each new border or interior time-honored and popular rationale used enforcement policy announcement, by conservative thought leaders and it becomes more difficult to avoid lawmakers in the president’s own party that the conclusion that the measures are carefully distinguishes illegal immigration driven by a desire to disrupt the lives from legal immigration, and is frequently 2 | UNIDOS US Beyond the Border: Family Separation in the Trump Era referenced as the “preferred” way that of the direct long-term costs of the Trump immigrants should enter the United States.4 administration’s immigration policies, The administration has quietly set forth though the full impact of those policies policies and procedures to restrict and could well be felt by all of us. Building reimagine the nation’s legal immigration upon Murguía’s characterization of the systems.5 If realized, those measures could Trump administration’s intensification of keep millions of families—including mixed anti-immigration policies as a fundamental immigration status families living in the moral and civic failure, this report aims to United States—separated, while substantially document the size and composition of the impeding the ability of immigrants from Latin “rest of the iceberg”—that is, American America, Asia, and Africa to apply for lawful children at risk of family separation due to permanent residence. President Trump’s the gamut of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and rhetoric have also immigration policies—and elaborate upon emboldened some state legislatures to the attendant risks and harms these pass laws that would require state and local policies are poised to generate based on law enforcement agencies to cooperate historical precedent. with federal immigration authorities in implementing the Trump administration’s In examining the direct and indirect harms indiscriminate immigration enforcement to American children at risk of being torn policies, which are targeting longtime from their parents, the report’s first section members of communities that pose no examines the scope and composition of the threat to national security or public safety. “rest of the iceberg.” The next section takes To date, Texas, Tennessee, and Iowa have an in-depth historical look at immigration enacted state laws that impose new duties enforcement practices and their implications and obligations on state and local law for the present day. Then, the report enforcement agencies in this respect. analyzes in detail the harms to U.S.-citizen children in terms of economic prosperity, It is not just immigrant communities that health and nutrition, educational attainment, are being harmed by these policies, but and safety. The report concludes with a the broader Latino community as a whole. discussion of the implications for the whole A recent survey conducted by the Pew of American society. Research Center finds that nearly half of Latinos (native and foreign-born individuals) Up to Six Million say their situation in America has worsened since 2017, up from 32% in the weeks after American Children Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election and the highest level since