The reunification of migrant families begins to become a reality

It seemed practically impossible that hundreds of families separated during the previous government could ever meet again. Amid cruel anti-immigrant rhetoric, a policy of “zero tolerance” at the border and, above all, a White House taken over by xenophobia for four long years, the hope that migrant mothers and fathers would see their parents again. children was almost nil.

The reunification of Bryan Chávez with his mother Sandra Ortiz this week in the San Ysidro, California, gate after more than three years separated – since 2017 -, when he had only 15 years of age, opens the possibility that the more than 1, parents can hug them again sometime in the near future. This, as a result of the efforts of the special team created last February by the present government for that purpose, but above all thanks to the clamor of the American majority and the pressure of pro-immigrant organizations that fought side by side for a long time to achieve it.

Indeed, there were more than 5, 500 families that were separated during the Donald Trump administration as part of its deterrence strategy so that, through fear of imminent separation, migrants would stop trying to reach the southern border in order to later enter the United States.

Obviously this was one of the most infamous and cruel immigration policies in recent memory in the United States, designed not to protect border security, but rather to inflict severe physical and especially psychological harm to migrants, especially minors.

The evaluation in this area and the consequences that in the short, medium and long terms will leave the family separation in migrant children, who were abruptly prevented from having the possibility of to continue by the side of their parents in the stage when they most needed them for their training.

That is, although it is really positive that the way If the reunification of the affected families is carried out little by little, it should not be overlooked that such separation should never have occurred, by common sense, by humanity and by ethical principle. Not in this United States that called itself multicultural, multi-ethnic, defender of human rights and other historical achievements since the fight for civil rights in the last century.

Being humanitarian, of course, is not something that could be asked or expected of Donald Trump, much less of his main adviser in this matter, the xenophobic Stephen Miller. It is not in their nature.

For now, Bryan and his mother are already together, after the odyssey that forced them to leave their native Michoacán, Mexico , to prevent him from being recruited by local gangs; Or, that what happened to his father, who, according to The Washington Post and the group Al Otro Lado, was disappeared in 2010 and his body found days later with gunshot wounds. Other people close to his family had the same end. In such a way that they had to flee for their lives.

Without knowing it, however, their destiny in the United States would be marked by another type of cruelty with the separation family from which they will still have to recover over the years. Bryan knows it better than anyone: now with impeccable English and working for a refugee aid group, Immigrant Defenders, he is heading down a path he never imagined, but now knows first-hand to advocate for refugees.

Cases like Bryan’s and his mother’s will start to multiply at some point. There’s no doubt. But your story will not be complete if you overlook a fact as important as it is overwhelming: given that the human rights of this group of migrant families were violated from the very White House – presided over by Donald Trump and controlled by Stephen Miller in the area of immigration policies—, accountability is something that should be on the list of urgencies, even when these characters are no longer in power.

The crime of Against humanity that they committed remains latent in each and every one of the cases of family separation, a cruelty that will surely echo in the historical account of that stage that seemed eternal.