It’s been five years since the controversial Trump-era policy on illegal border crossings, which led to more than 5,000 children being separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border between 2017 and 2021. A special team is still working to reunite these families.
Supporters of the Biden administration’s Family Reunification Task Force say it needs to do more, as some families are still not accounted for. The data used to find these families has been inconsistent, causing some to remain undiscovered.
Reuniting families
Now, some experts propose using DNA data to help reunite families. Researchers from Northwestern University have analyzed the task force’s reports and found four key issues that need attention. These include different definitions of “reunification,” problems in tracking ongoing separations, the importance of helping families deal with trauma after reuniting, and the failure to report separations that don’t fit the child-parent category.
The idea is simple: If using DNA data can help even one child find their family, it’s worth trying.
“Our goal is not to undermine the careful and intentional work of the task force but to highlight the mountain of a challenge they have in accounting for these separations,” the researchers explain.
“We want to highlight how the numbers the task force reports have importance to the general public. The lack of coverage of what happened to these families is misleading. While the task force is doing the important work, they’re not tasked with covering the full effect of the separations.”
An enduring challenge
The scale of the problem is reflected in the fact that around 1,000 children were still believed to be separated from their families in September 2023. Indeed, the task force hadn’t found contact information for nearly 100 of those children’s parents.
“Every child counts,” the researchers explain. “If using DNA data to reunite these families could help even one child, it’s worth giving it a shot.”
A limited task force was set up to help a specific group of children who were part of a lawsuit in 2018. However, some experts have pointed out that the task force reports do not tell us what happened to over 1,000 children who were not part of this lawsuit.
Five years after the separations, the task force is still trying to fix the problems within their narrow focus. But there is a worry that separations could happen again if the government’s approach changes. The experts wonder how we can prevent more separations when we still don’t have good systems to track when they happen or how to bring families back together.
Mixed progress
The task force has released 14 progress reports up to August 2023. The experts found that the reports use different definitions for the term “reunified.” In some reports, children were considered “reunified” whether they were in the U.S. or their home countries, while other reports only counted reunifications in the U.S. This inconsistency makes it hard to understand the true picture.
The task force’s efforts only cover a specific group: children under 18 separated from their parents or guardians at the U.S.-Mexico border between January 20, 2017, and January 20, 2021. This leaves out separations at other border entry points during that time, and even cases at an international airport in 2019 that involved U.S. citizens. This raises questions about how comprehensive the task force’s work really is.
The term “family” is also a problem. It doesn’t include non-parental relationships or different family structures, leading to an undercount of the true number of separations. The experts want to know what happened to aunts, uncles, or older siblings traveling with younger siblings, and what happens when two children are siblings.
Just counting how many families are reunited is not enough to understand the full extent of the damage caused by separations. Reunification is an ongoing process, not the end of the story. Families who manage to reunite might not get the privileges of living in the U.S., and the support they receive doesn’t last. The experts remind us that while reuniting families is a crucial goal, it doesn’t fix all the problems caused by these traumatic events.
