Eg
themomedit.com/2018/06/keeping-families-together/ recommends:
What to Read for Understanding
What’s Happening When Asylum-Seeking Families are Separated
www.texasmonthly.com/news/whats-really-happening-asylum-seeking-families-separated/
This is a detailed interview with Ann Chandler, who runs the Children’s Border Project, the organization who works with hundreds of kids that have been released from ORR’s [Office of Refugee Resettlement] care.
They are not a legal service, they’ve mostly been working with the parents in the days they are being separated from their children. It’s horrific.
‘Sometimes they will tell the parent, “We’re taking your child away.” And when the parent asks, “When will we get them back?” they say, “We can’t tell you that.”
Sometimes the officers will say, “because you’re going to be prosecuted” or “because you’re not welcome in this country” or “because we’re separating them,” without giving them a clear justification.
In other cases, we see no communication that the parent knows that their child is to be taken away. Instead, the officers say, “I’m going to take your child to get bathed.” That’s one we see again and again.
“Your child needs to come with me for a bath.” The child goes off, and in a half an hour, twenty minutes, the parent inquires, ^“Where is my five-year-old?” “Where’s my seven-year-old?” “This is a long bath.”
And they say, “You won’t be seeing your child again.”^
In the article, Ann Chandler does a good job of explaining *why these asylum-seekers are not able to come in through the legal ports of entry’
She also describes how poor the administration of the separation arrangements are and it’s very clear how unlikely it will be that a lot of them will be able to be reunited with their families.
It’s horrendous.