Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Literature Review Rws
Literature Review Rws
Review of Literature
Fernanda Velazquez
Abstract
The immigration system has faced a lot of backlash over the course of the last year, when
president Trump enforced a “Zero-Tolerance” Policy which separated children from their parents
when crossing the border illegally. This issue has gone viral over all sorts of media platforms and
eventually pushed president Trump to pass an executive order halting the separation of families
at the border. Below, we analyze the facts and the effects that these separations have had on
Introduction
In current years, immigration laws have been reaching a “Zero-Tolerance” level that has affected
the lives of many immigrants negatively. Since the Obama administration, and administrations
before, immigration laws have always been enforced and detaining illegal immigrants was not
unusual. However, since the beginning of the Trump administration, these laws have been
practiced in a ruthless manner and have gone as far as to separate young children from their
parents and justifying this cruel behavior by claiming it is “part of the law”. President Trump
recently signed an executive order that halted the separation of families at the border indefinitely,
but that still does not justify the fact that he actively encouraged it in the first place. The
following research questions were chosen in order to further investigate if President Trump
really had the authority to enforce such laws and if they even existed at all in the first place, as he
had claimed.
1. What is The Flores Settlement and how does it relate to the immigration laws that were
2. Were children and parents informed as to why they had to be separated when crossing the
border illegally?
3. Were parents able to track their children, have access to information on their
whereabouts, or contact with their children at all while they were separated?
4. What psychological effects could the separation of children from their parents have on
the children?
Immigration laws have always been a hot button issue in the United States. Even since
the Obama presidency, authorities were trying to regulate the incoming immigrants in the Unites
States. However, when Mr. Trump assumed his presidential term, he began enforcing these laws
in a rather unusual manner. Many people have heard of or seen pictures and maybe even footage
of so-called “holding camps” where children were being held captive. These camps were held up
to very low living standards, holding these children in cages like animals. Besides this being
plain inhumane and cruel, there is actually a law that is supposed to prevent this from happening,
known as The Flores Settlement. Back in 1997, the District Court for the Central District of
California approved an agreement regulating the detention, release and treatment of children
under the custody of federal immigration authorities. (Refugees International, 2018). This
settlement was created when a mother was separated from her daughter when they migrated to
the U.S. seeking asylum back in the 80’s. The federal government possesses very few procedural
safeguards that protect children and their families from being treated unjustly when being
detained in the United States, which is why the Flores Settlement isn’t very known to the public.
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Running Head: MASS DEPORTATION AND THE SEPARATION OF FAMILIES
Entering the United States as an undocumented immigrant is considered a civil infraction, not a
criminal offense. (Heinonline.org). Although this is the case, authorities treat undocumented
immigration as a criminal act. The main difference between a criminal offense and civil
infraction is that a criminal offense could often result in the placement of an individual in prison,
an individual is given a fine, etc. while a civil infraction is a smaller violation of a law less
offense results in not giving undocumented immigrants the same as safeguards as they would a
civil offense, such as the right to counsel. Going back to the first question and how the Flores
Settlement relates to the immigration laws enforced earlier this year, this document should be
able to protect any children and their families from being detained in cruel and inhumane
immigration reporter Jean Guerrero, who personally visited a family detention center back in
2017. Guerrero described the conditions of the center to be very poor, and even said she was told
she was not allowed to record anything inside the facility and her and her crew would be kicked
out of the facility if they did so. Guerrero and her team went into the facility and recognized that
this particular center was filled with only boys, no parents, and the girls were in another facility
(when asked about the girls’ facility, Guerrero’s team was told it was a little worse). Images and
videos of these facilities also flooded social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which
caused outrage from both sides of the issue. Many people argued that president Trump was not
the one who created the law, that even American people are separated from their children when
they are convicted for criminal activity; which are all true and fair allegations. However, the
undocumented presence of an individual in the United States is actually a civil infraction, NOT a
criminal offense (Marquette Law Review), which means that undocumented children coming
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Running Head: MASS DEPORTATION AND THE SEPARATION OF FAMILIES
into the United States with their parents, unless faced with danger if they stay with the parent, do
As stated above, children are always separated from their parents when they commit
criminal offenses, or whenever the parent becomes a threat to themselves and the child’s well-
being. However, in a lot of cases where these children were being separated from their parents,
authorities failed to inform the parents as to why they were being separated even when they were
not committing any criminal activity. One example of this was a Brazilian mother who identified
herself as just Jocelyn because she was fleeing domestic violence, while her 14-year-old son was
fleeing gang threats. Jocelyn said she hoped to apply for asylum when she arrived to the U.S.,
but when they did, her son was taken from her without any warning. "I didn't know where they
were taking him," she said of her son. "They didn't tell me. I asked many times. They just said
'Don't worry.'" Jocelyn is just one of the many parents who came to the U.S. to seek asylum and
On the other hand, it is also true that crossing the border and asking for asylum does NOT
guarantee it, and it does NOT make illegal entry into the country legal. It is true, as stated above,
that illegal entry is a civil infraction, but it could also be punishable by law under 18 U.S.C.
3559, with up to six months of imprisonment for first offenders. It is true, that law DOES allow
this—but nowhere in the law does it justify the separation of children from their parents.
When a parent commits a crime of any kind in the United States, authorities are required
to remove their children from their care in order to protect the children. However, it is also true
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Running Head: MASS DEPORTATION AND THE SEPARATION OF FAMILIES
that once the parents are released, the system does its best to return the children to their parents,
because they encourage families staying together. This is because a lot of children are still in
their formative years when they’re separated from their parents, and being separated can cause
great trauma to the child. ICE were in charge of separating these families, but they were not in
charge of caring for the children. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) were in
charge for caring and providing shelter, and even psychiatric help to children separated from
their parents. The HHS did not openly oppose to the separation of these families, but they
acclaimed they did not recommend it, for it could cause irreversible damage to the children. Ever
Reyes-Mejia is a father of two children, one three-year-old boy and a five-month-old babygirl
who he was separated from for three and a half months. In a heartbreaking video that has spread
all over social media, Ever and the mother of his children are reunited with their children in
Houston, Texas. At the time of the meeting, Sammy, the three-year-old, squirms away when his
mother tries to hold him. The mother begs him to let her hold him, reminding him that she’s his
mother—but the young child keeps running away. This is just one of the most popular example
of the kind of psychological trauma that these children are going through when they’re separated
from their parents without knowing why. Many of these children may even think their parents
are just abandoning altogether. On top of that, a lot of these children as young as Sammy, are
being asked to appear on their own to their deportation proceedings. “We were representing a 3-
year-old in court recently who had been separated from the parents. And the child — in the
middle of the hearing — started climbing up on the table…It really highlighted the absurdity of
what we’re doing with these kids.” Said Lindsay Toczylowski, the executive director of
Immigrant Defenders Law Center in Los Angeles. She highlighted the absurdity of having
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Running Head: MASS DEPORTATION AND THE SEPARATION OF FAMILIES
toddlers, most of whom do not even speak English, having to represent themselves in court. This,
Primary research
When conducting a survey to find out just how informed people that live in the
borderland are about the immigration situation, 75% of the people surveyed believed the way the
immigration laws were enforced were unfair, and 62% said they don’t believe the issue got
enough media coverage. The following is a quote from an anonymous survey taker, “I strongly
believe the way the trump administration handled immigration this year was unfair and unjust
because children were treated immorally by being torn away from their parents. As a result of
this, majority of them may be scarred for life from the experience.”
Immigration is and will always be a controversial issue. While many people agree with
the Trump administration, they don’t support the separation of families—and vise versa. The
facts stand that illegal migration into the country will cause in prosecution, but the conditions in
which many of these people are held and the psychological trauma they experience from them
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immigrant children in u.s. custody. Marquette Law Review 95(4), 1635-1678.
Knopf, A. (2018). Family separation policy reminds all parents how important you
are. Brown University Child & Adolescent Behavior Letter, 34(10), 1–2.
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border/
Hennessy-Fiske, M. (2018, February 20). U.S. is separating immigrant parents and
children to discourage others, activists say. Retrieved from
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does-not-make-illegal-entry-into-america-legal
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