Jan. 17, 2019 – The Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general finds that thousands more children than previously known may have been separated from their parents since 2017. The numbers began to increase in the summer of 2017, when DHS referred more and more separated children to ORR. The number of children separated is unknown because of the lack of a formal tracking system coordinated among the agencies involved.

Jan. 17, 2019 – The list of families to be reunified is “still being revised” nearly six months after reunification is ordered by a federal court, The New York Times reports.

Feb. 14, 2019 – A report by the Texas Civil Rights Project finds that as family separations continue, a significant number of children have been separated from relatives other than parents or legal guardians. Such separations are not counted by DHS in its statistics.

Feb. 27, 2019 – The federal government received more than 4,500 complaints about the sexual abuse of immigrant children held in detention from October 2014 to July 2018, The New York Times reports. Of the 1,303 cases considered the gravest, 178 included accusations of sexual assault by adult staff members. Those allegations included rape, fondling, kissing and watching children shower.

March 8, 2019 – A federal judge agrees to expand the ACLU’s class action lawsuit – which earlier resulted in a reunification order – to include families that had been separated months earlier than those previously disclosed.

March 9, 2019 – The Trump administration reports to a federal court that it has separated 245 children from their parents and other relatives since President Trump rescinded the family separation policy nearly nine months earlier. Government officials say they are following guidelines allowing separations when an adult poses a safety risk to the child. But The New York Times reports that in some cases children were removed from parents who had minor previous offenses, including one for possessing a small amount of marijuana.



Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Images

April 6, 2019 – The government says in court documents that it may take two years to identify potentially thousands of children who’ve been separated from their families at the southern border.

May 8, 2019 – The administration acknowledges it has separated 389 families since June 2018, when a court ordered it to end the policy. Advocates contend the number is significantly higher, noting that at least 40 separations occur daily along the California border, with others continuing in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

May 18, 2019 – The Trump administration acknowledges that it may have separated at least 1,712 additional children before the “zero tolerance policy” went into effect in May 2018.

June 2, 2019 – NBC News reports that in July 2018, some 37 children boarded a van for a 30-minute drive to the Port Isabel Detention Center in Los Fresnos, Texas, to be reunited with their parents. Some were as young as 5. But once there, they were forced to wait in the van, in the hot sun – some for as long as 39 hours.

June 20, 2019 – The Associated Press ignites public outcry when it reports that at a facility near El Paso, roughly 250 infants, children and teens have been locked up for 27 days without adequate food, water or sanitation. Some were separated from adult caregivers after arriving at the border. At least 15 were suffering from the flu. “In my 22 years of doing visits with children in detention, I have never heard of this level of inhumanity,” says Holly Cooper, an attorney who represents the detained youth.

July 8, 2019 – ProPublica reports that the U.S. is now using databases from foreign police and militaries to find out if asylum seekers have gang affiliations. Attorneys representing asylum seekers along the border question how frequently the databases are used and whether they may be wrongly labeling migrants as criminals. The report points to a Salvadoran man named Carlos, who was separated from his family after immigration agents accused him of being in a gang. “I told them I’ve never been in a gang,” he said. “And the agent said your government is saying you are.”

July 12, 2019 – The House Committee on Oversight and Reform held a hearing where witnesses described the trauma caused by the Trump administration’s family separation policy, and stated that the administration was not transparent regarding the purpose of the separations, and that the “nightmare” of separating families continues. What’s more, witnesses pointed out that the administration’s policies are continuing to cause problems at the border – not helping to resolve them.

July 15, 2019 – NPR reports that after a doctor told Border Patrol agents that a 3-year-old girl from Honduras who suffers a heart condition should remain in the U.S., an agent gave the family a choice: One parent could stay with the child, but the other would have to return to Mexico. The agent told the girl to choose. After the doctor appealed to another agent, the family was released together.

July 30, 2019 – The ACLU files a motion in the U.S. District Court of San Diego, asking a federal judge to block the Trump administration from continuing to separate families at the border. Since the nationwide injunction was issued on June 26, 2018, more than 900 parents and children – not excluding babies – have been separated at the border. The ACLU alleges that families have been separated for minor transgressions such as traffic offenses. “It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt says. “The administration must not be allowed to circumvent the court order over infractions like minor traffic violations.”

Aug. 21, 2019 – DHS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announce a new rule that would end the Flores settlement. The settlement is a consent decree in place for more than two decades that limits the length of time migrant children can be detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to 20 days, requires the government to comply with certain standards of care, and states that children must be placed in the “least restrictive” setting appropriate for their age and needs. The Trump administration’s rule would allow it to indefinitely detain migrant families who crossed the border without authorization.

Aug. 22, 2019 – The New York Times reports that “there is a stench” where detained migrant children are held in a Texas CBP facility. The children have not been able to bathe since crossing the border, and their clothes are soiled with snot and tears. Moreover, the children do not have access to soap, toothbrushes or toothpaste. A reporter described the facility’s conditions as “a chaotic scene of sickness and filth.” One attorney who has for years inspected government facilities that hold migrant children says, “So many children are sick, they have the flu, and they’re not being properly treated.”

September 2019 – A report issued by the HHS Office of Inspector General states that “intense trauma” was common among children who had entered Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) facilities in 2018, with children who had been “unexpectedly separated from a parent” facing additional trauma. The report highlights that children exhibited “fear, feelings of abandonment and post-traumatic stress” along with anxiety and loss resulting from the separations. Suffering from acute grief, the children would also cry inconsolably.

Sept. 5, 2019 – Judge Sabraw orders the Trump administration to reunite 11 children with parents who were deported under its family separation policy. He says some migrants were pressured to consent to their deportation while they were separated from their children, and that immigration officials gave them false or confusing information. He orders the government to allow the migrants to return to the U.S. for an opportunity to pursue asylum claims.

Sept. 27, 2019 – U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee of the Central District of California rejects the administration’s plan to end the Flores settlement. Advocates previously lamented that terminating the settlement would be “cruel beyond imagination,” citing the cases of at least seven children who died in detention.

Nov. 6, 2019 – U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt orders the government to provide mental health screenings and treatment to separated parents, citing “extensive evidence” of the “substantial trauma” that these families suffered due to the Trump administration’s policy.

Nov. 25, 2019 – The DHS Office of Inspector General reports that the agency failed to properly track and reunify families during the family separation crisis, citing “poor data entry, data tracking, information sharing and IT systems capabilities.”

Dec. 9, 2019 – The U.S. government has separated more than 1,100 migrant families at the border since June 2018, when Trump issued an executive order to halt separations, The Intercept reports. The government’s own data suggests the number could be even higher, due to wildly inconsistent record keeping.

Dec. 16, 2019 – The Trump administration knew migrant children would suffer from family separations but ramped up the practice anyway, The Texas Tribune reports.