Despite the dedicated efforts of a task force set up to facilitate reunifications, about a thousand migrant children separated from their parents, most under the now-infamous 2018 zero tolerance policy, remain separated. Even if all are eventually reunited, the scars left will be indelible.
There’s a reason this has become the symbol for Donald Trump and White House adviser Stephen Miller’s restrict-immigration-at-all-costs depravity. Most people, no matter how committed to their ideologies, still draw the line at intentionally harming and traumatizing children for a political end, let alone for punishing people whose transgression was seeking a better life.
With Trump’s departure from the White House, the plight of these children and their parents have largely faded from headlines and from public consciousness. Yet this is a horror that we must never forget, and never forgive, especially as it was done in our name.
