BREAKING: Biden Administration Reaches Settlement with Families Separated Under Trump-Miller Zero-Tolerance Policy

For Immediate Release: October 16, 2023

“This case serves as a stark reminder of the indispensable role that local experiences, knowledge, and expertise can play in driving national policy conversations and illuminating the human realities of the border.”

EL PASO, TEXAS - The Biden administration made an announcement today that it has reached a settlement with families who were separated during the Trump administration's ‘zero-tolerance’ policy. This settlement includes restrictions on the government's ability to implement a similar policy in the future, as part of an effort to resolve a longstanding court case.

Las Americas was one of the first organizations in El Paso, a testing ground for this and many other immigration policies, to respond to the violent separation of migrant children from their parents happening at the U.S.-Mexico border.  We led the response starting in the fall of 2017, months before the Trump Administration publicly pushed to do this border-wide.  In those first months, Las Americas provided legal support to more than seventy separated families and documented the impact of this practice on hundreds more.  

Marisa Limón Garza, Executive Director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and New Mexico, shared the following statement: 

“Family separation, or zero-tolerance policy, is the defining policy failure of the Trump administration — and one for which all Americans must hold all current and past administration officials accountable. Thousands of children were ripped from their parents arms, jailed in cages and camps, and our government ignored its own laws allowing vulnerable people to seek asylum at our borders. 

“Experiences like Keldy’s were key to driving forward litigation against family separation.  This, in particular, was heart wrenching work, and we were only able to persist and see it through because of the resolve of the parents we were serving.  Their strength, love, and determination, alongside all of those impacted, in confronting such an egregious wrong, made this settlement possible. 

“This case serves as a stark reminder of the indispensable role that local experiences, knowledge, and expertise can play in driving national policy conversations and illuminating the human realities of the border. It is imperative that we include those communities when discussing border policy, and never forget that the policies made in conference rooms in D.C. may not align with the practices in borderland communities. Our government must be held accountable for its actions, and cannot obscure its atrocities by using jargon and euphemisms like zero-tolerance while perpetrating perverse acts like separating toddlers and children from their parents.

“While this settlement can never fully undo the harm and horror that these separated families had to endure as U.S. government policy, it gives legal power to the moral imperative that we can never let family separations happen again.  We call on Congress to do their part and enshrine this prohibition on family separations at the border as a permanent part of U.S. law.”