Silvana Bermudez and her three children

Desperate families with credible asylum claims have fled to our southern border, but rather than to live up to our reputation as a beacon of hope, the Trump administration has been separating parents and kids already facing immense trauma. This idea to use separation as a deterrent was originally concocted by former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary John Kelly, though he “quickly walked back his comments after they triggered public outrage,” reports the Washington Post.

But while DHS claims it “does not currently have a policy of separating women and children,” it is carrying out the cruel practice anyway, now under the watch of Kelly’s successor, Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen. These families include a Salvadoran mother and children who fled their home after a gang threatened to kill her teenage son. They traveled nearly 3,000 miles across three nations, hoping their nightmare would be over after reaching our border. It continued:

But now, in a frigid Border Patrol facility in Arizona where they were seeking asylum, Silvana Bermudez was told she had to say goodbye. Her kids were being taken from her. She handed her sleeping preschooler to her oldest, a 16-year-old with a whisper of a mustache whose life had been baseball and anime until a gun was pointed at his head. “My love, take care of your little brother,” she told him on Dec. 17. “Bye, Mommy,” said her 11-year-old daughter, sobbing. And then her children were gone.

They aren’t alone. Just days ago, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued for the release of a Congolese mother and child detained thousands of miles apart from each other. The Women’s Refugee Commission estimates that “at least 426 immigrant adults and children who had been separated by authorities since Donald Trump took office,” with parents getting detained on their own and their children at other facilities, boys separated from girls, no matter how young or the circumstances.

”At one point, the 11-year-old’s only roommate was a 4-year-old,” the Washington Post reports. “Shelter employees asked her to help care for the girl by warming up her bottle and putting her to sleep. ‘She was alone,” Silvana’s daughter said. ‘Without her mom. Without anyone.’”