Five years after Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy was implemented at the Mexican border, 300 children remain alone, their parents untraceable
On 6 April 2018, President Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, directed federal prosecutors “to adopt immediately a zero-tolerance” approach to anyone crossing the border illegally. It was a brutal policy, which had been started, furtively, a year earlier and resulted in the separation of around 5,500 children from their parents. Five years later, 300 children remain alone, their parents untraceable. There is no note of their parents’ name, no phone number, no attorney, no sponsor. It is, we felt, an intolerable number, and one which prompted our investigation into how this is possible; how it came to be that America had effectively orphaned hundreds of minors. In American history, this is surely one of its darkest episodes. And, it turns out, it isn’t yet over. Basia Cummings, Editor
Thousands of children were separated from their parents at the US border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy. This is the story of how, five years later, 300 remain lost in a system designed to swallow them
Monday 6 September 2021
Photograph by John Moore/Getty Images