Thousands of families that were broken up at the U.S-Mexico border as part of President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy found some relief with a legal settlement that grants them pathways to seek asylum and provides benefits to offset the trauma they suffered, including help in finding work, housing, legal advice and medical care.
The settlement also requires the U.S. government to agree it will not reenact the child separation policies that were condemned by many Christian groups and child welfare agencies but were approved by evangelical pro-family groups that supported Trump — and which he has threatened to reinstitute if elected president in 2024.
“To America’s enduring shame, we tore children from the arms of their families to enact a xenophobic agenda,” said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, which was lead counsel on the case. “This settlement closes the darkest chapter of the Trump administration, but as welcomed as it is, the damage inflicted on these families will forever be tragic and irreversible.”
“This settlement closes the darkest chapter of the Trump administration, but as welcomed as it is, the damage inflicted on these families will forever be tragic and irreversible.”
A 2019 study concluded: “Immigrant children who faced forced separation from their parents may be at heightened risk of developing mental health disorders, including depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and anxiety disorders.”
The class action lawsuit was brought by families harmed by Trump’s child separation policy in 2017 and 2018. Overall, up to 5,000 children as young as six months were taken from their parents. Children were shipped to centers sometimes thousands of miles from the border, while many parents were arrested and deported. Trump administration officials didn’t have a plan for reuniting families and didn’t keep records to assist families searching for their children.
The New York Times reported that about three-quarters of the families separated have either been reunified or been provided with the information they need to be reunited. But that means one-third have not.
Many groups denounced Trump’s child separation policy, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Southern Baptist Convention and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Leaders of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, and other evangelical groups signed a letter condemning the policy, saying, “God has established the family as the fundamental building block of society.”
Even loyal Trump supporter Franklin Graham called Trump’s family separation policy “disgraceful.”
But Jeff Sessions, then Trump’s attorney general, defended the policy by quoting Scripture: “Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. … I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13 to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained the government for his purposes. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves … and protect the weak and it protects the lawful.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders agreed, saying it is “very biblical to enforce the law. … That is actually repeated a number of times throughout the Bible.”
But both Focus on the Family founder James Dobson and Jim Daly, the Focus CEO who succeeded Dobson, visited the border to see the policy in action. Both gave their blessings.
While Dobson acknowledged the pain suffered by the immigrant children (“The children looked traumatized and frightened”) he was harsh in his judgment of their parents in his controversial 2019 letter to donors: “I can only report that without an overhaul of the law and the allocation of resources, millions of illegal immigrants will continue flooding to this great land from around the world. Many of them have no marketable skills. They are illiterate and unhealthy. Some are violent criminals. Their numbers will soon overwhelm the culture as we have known it, and it could bankrupt the nation. America has been a wonderfully generous and caring country since its founding. That is our Christian nature. But in this instance, we have met a worldwide wave of poverty that will take us down if we don’t deal with it. And it won’t take long for the inevitable consequences to happen.”
Dobson, who helped elect Trump in 2016, served on his evangelical advisory council and supported his claims of a rigged 2020 election, questioned whether children were really being separated from their families, suggesting they were actually being “recycled” as part of an illegal-immigration scam: “I was told that some of the vulnerable children are ‘recycled’ repeatedly to help men gain entry to this country. An unknown number of these men are hardened criminals and drug runners, and they are difficult to identify.”
Daly, who called Trump “the most pro-life president” of his lifetime, tried to change the subject from Trump’s family separation policies to one of Focus’ old enemies, saying, “The most dangerous place for a child to be is inside the womb of a woman inside a Planned Parenthood clinic.”
The pushback was sudden. Tyler Huckabee, editor of Relevant, wrote that Dobson’s “posture is one of naked terror and, yes, bigotry. … It’s just exaggerated paranoia that sacrifices empathy at the altar of protecting a certain type of focus on one very particular, narrow definition of ‘family’ to the exclusion of the millions of migrant families who don’t love their children any less than Dobson’s audience does.”
“Evangelical Christianity has sided with the oppressor, not the oppressed.”
“James Dobson’s anti-immigrant rhetoric is dangerous,” said Sojourners: “The rhetoric of evangelicals like Dobson … legitimizes the dehumanizing policies of the Trump administration at the border in the name of protecting their version of American ‘culture’ … . The policy of family separation is no longer inhumane or immoral, but, according to Dobson, the only practical solution. Evangelical Christianity has sided with the oppressor, not the oppressed.”
Jim Daly revisited the topic of immigration in an early 2022 tweet: “The number of unaccompanied children encountered along the southern Border increased by 73% from 2019 to 2021. The crisis at our border has rarely been worse. We need real immigration reform to secure our border while providing those here illegally with respect and compassion.”
The settlement announced this week is expected to be approved by a federal judge in December. The separated families had sought financial compensation for their loss. While that issue was left out of the legal settlement, other lawsuits against the U.S. are ongoing.
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