Trump administration separates thousands of migrant families in the US

MIAMI, December 13 ------ President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy split more than 5,000 children from their families at the Mexico border during his first term. Border crossings sit at a record low nearly a year into his second administration and a new wave of immigration enforcement is dividing families inside the U.S.

Federal officials and their local law enforcement partners are detaining tens of thousands of asylum-seekers and migrants. Detainees are moved repeatedly, then deported, or held in poor conditions for weeks or months before asking to go home. The federal government was holding an average of more than 66,000 people in November, the highest on record.

During the first Trump administration, families were forcibly separated at the border, and authorities struggled to find children in a vast shelter system because government computer systems weren't linked. Now, parents inside the United States are being arrested by immigration authorities and separated from their families during prolonged detention. Or, they choose to have their children remain in the U.S. after an adult is deported, many after years or decades here.

The Trump administration and its anti-immigration backers see “unprecedented success," and Trump’s top border adviser, Tom Homan, told reporters in April that “we’re going to keep doing it, full speed ahead.”

Three families separated by migration enforcement in recent months told The Associated Press that their dreams of better, freer lives had clashed with Washington’s new immigration policy, and their existence is anguished without knowing if they will see their loved ones again. For them, migration marked the possible start of permanent separation between parents and children, the source of deep pain and uncertainty. A family divided between Florida and Venezuela

Antonio Laverde left Venezuela for the U.S. in 2022 and crossed the border illegally, then requested asylum. He got a work permit and a driver’s license and worked as an Uber driver in Miami, sharing homes with other immigrants so he could send money to relatives in Venezuela and Florida. Laverde's wife, Jakelin Pasedo, and their sons followed him from Venezuela to Miami in December 2024. Pasedo focused on caring for her sons while her husband earned enough to support the family. Pasedo and the kids got refugee status, but Laverde, 39, never obtained it, and as he left for work one early June morning, he was arrested by federal agents.

Pasedo says it was a case of mistaken identity by agents hunting for a suspect in their shared housing. In the end, she and her children, then 3 and 5, remember the agents cuffing Laverde at gunpoint. “They got sick with fever, crying for their father, asking for him,” Pasedo said. Laverde was held at Broward Transitional Center, a detention facility in Pompano Beach, Florida. In September, after three months of detention, he asked to return to Venezuela.

Pasedo, 39, however, has no plans to go back. She fears she could be arrested or kidnapped for criticizing the socialist government and belonging to the political opposition. She works cleaning offices and, despite all the obstacles, hopes to reunify with her husband someday in the U.S.

Source: mb.com.ph