'Calculated cruelty': Report details lasting harms of Trump family separation policy

A report published Monday by a coalition of human rights groups estimates that as many as 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy have yet to be reunited, causing immense suffering for families ensnared in the punitive effort to deter border crossings.

The 135-page report was produced by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, and it comes as immigrant rights advocates brace for President-elect Donald Trump's return to power alongside officials who helped develop and implement the large-scale family separations.

"Forcible separation of children from their families inflicted harms that were severe and foreseeable," states the report, which examines public and internal government documents, materials from legal proceedings, and the findings of government investigations and features interviews with parents and children who were forcibly separated by the Trump administration.

"Once parents realized they would not be immediately reunited with their children, they were distraught," the report continues. "Some children sobbed uncontrollably. Many felt abandoned. Nearly all were bewildered, not least because immigration officials would not tell them where their parents were or gave responses that proved to be lies."

The groups estimate that the first Trump administration separated more than 4,600 children from their families during its four years in power, and nearly 30% of the children are unaccounted for and "may remain separated from their parents."

"A government should never target children to send a message to parents."

While family separations predated Trump's first term and have continued under President Joe Biden, experts argue the Trump administration's policy was uniquely expansive and cruel. The groups behind the new report said the Trump administration's family separation efforts "constituted enforced disappearance and may have constituted torture."

"We need to take away children," Jeff Sessions, then Trump's attorney general, reportedly said during a May 2018 call with five federal prosecutors, the report observes, citing handwritten notes from one of the prosecutors.

Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children's rights counsel at HRW and an author of the new report, said in a statement Monday that "it's chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy."

"A government should never target children to send a message to parents," Bochenek added.

The separations traumatized both parents and children, according to the report.

"Migrant children who have been forcibly separated from their parents demonstrate greater emotional and behavioral difficulties than children who have never been separated," the report notes. "Parents repeatedly told Al Otro Lado, a legal services organization based in Tijuana, that forced separation from their children was 'the worst thing they had ever experienced' and reported 'continued disturbances in sleep, nightmares, loss of appetite, loss of interest, fear for the future, constant worry, hopelessness, and loss of the ability to concentrate.'"

"In May 2018," the report adds, "a man killed himself after [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] agents forcibly separated him from his children."

HRW, TCRP, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic called on Congress and the Biden administration to "put in place comprehensive measures to remedy the wrongs these families suffered" and urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—soon to be led by far-right South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem—to "adopt standards that presumptively keep families together, separating them only when in a child's best interest."

Trump campaigned during the 2024 election on a pledge to launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and he said during an interview aired last week that "we don't have to separate families."

"We'll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came," Trump said, suggesting he'll also deport children who are U.S. citizens.

When pressed on whether he intends to revive the "zero tolerance" policy, Trump said, "We need deterrence."

"When somebody comes here illegally, they're going out. It's very simple," he added. "Now if they come here illegally but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out, or they can all go out together."

The ACLU, which has represented separated families in court, has pledged to take swift legal action if the incoming Trump administration brings back "zero tolerance."

"I am hopeful that the Trump administration recognized the outpouring from the American public and the worldwide revulsion to ripping little children away from their parents and will not try to separate families again," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt toldTIME magazine last month. "But if it does we will be back in court immediately."