\n<\/p>\n
Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts<\/em><\/p>\n In the Trump administration\u2019s recent round of immigration crackdown, the American public hasn\u2019t seen the same terrible images of migrant children at the border being snatched from their mother\u2019s arms, as they did during his first administration. But that\u2019s because family separation has morphed into something less visible and possibly harder to track. In President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, his administration has focused on dismantling a system specifically constructed to protect minors from the harsher aspects of immigration enforcement.<\/p>\n The system was built in response to reports of children dying in the custody of ICE. It diverts minors away from immigration enforcement, and toward a system focused on their safety and run through the Department of Health and Human Services. Congress provided funding, among other things, for lawyers to help minors move through asylum courts.<\/p>\n But anti-immigration Trump officials for years have complained about this separate track, and now they are innovating many bureaucratic and legalistic ways to break down those protections. Officials have kept minors in detention for longer periods, floated the idea of charging people who are applying for asylum, and they have made it harder for family members to claim minors.<\/p>\n In this episode, we visit two vulnerable minors who were just 5 and 2 years old when they crossed the border after escaping gang violence in Central America.<\/p>\n The following is a transcript of the episode:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Hanna Rosin:<\/strong> Usually when a kid encounters a Lego set, they know what to do. Put the driver in the race car, the flamingo in the pond, the astronaut in the spaceship. But the Lego set this kid is playing with, it\u2019s not so obvious what it is, or who goes where.<\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Pel\u00f3n. Ahora es muy pel\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> It features a lot of random characters\u2014chef, painter, a robot, a knight.<\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Es el caballero. Caballero que defiende mi castillo.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>The kid picks up the knight, turns him over, pops off the helmet.<\/p>\n Kevin Townsend:<\/strong> Muy pel\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Muy pel\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Muy pel\u00f3n.<\/em> \u201cVery bald.\u201d He shows the pirate to our producer, Kevin.<\/p>\n Townsend:<\/strong> Pirata tambi\u00e9n muy pel\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Pirata muy pel\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Also bald. He sticks the pirate behind one of the desks\u2014that\u2019s where the lawyers would sit. He tries the knight at the witness stand and the robot on one seat that\u2019s higher than all the rest\u2014that is where the judge would sit.<\/p>\n Asiyah Sarwari:<\/strong> It\u2019s really cute, but this is exactly what an immigration court will look like. So this stenographer would be there, and that\u2019s where they have to go and talk. And so that\u2019s where the judge comes from.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> This is Asiyah Sarwari, managing attorney at the Atlanta office of the International Rescue Committee, or IRC. She and her staff built this Lego court as a makeshift solution to an impossible problem: How do you explain to a 6-year-old what immigration court is?<\/p>\n Sarwari: <\/strong>I mean, immigration court is frightening for everybody across the board, adults and kids, but this is a way for the kids to understand that this is a time for them to be able to tell their story and also to just give them some comfort.<\/p>\n It really calms the kids down because when they go to court, then they\u2019re like, Oh, okay, this is where the judge sits. This is where I sit<\/em>, sort of thing.<\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Pirata muy pel\u00f3n. Yo soy rey. Son\u2014<\/p>\n [Sounds of Lego pieces falling on ground<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Boy:<\/strong> Ay!<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> I\u2019m Hanna Rosin. This is Radio Atlantic<\/em>. Today, Trump\u2019s immigration policy meets a 6-year-old boy.<\/p>\n Many of you listening might remember the phrase family separation<\/em>, from Trump\u2019s first term. Images of babies being torn from their mothers\u2019 arms. Hysterical parents. Children in what looked like cages.<\/p>\n [Sounds of children crying<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>We haven\u2019t seen a spectacle like that yet, mainly because there aren\u2019t as many families crossing at the border. But that doesn\u2019t mean things are any better for unaccompanied minors. This time around, the Trump administration is going after special protections for these kids, protections that have been carved out over the last decade.<\/p>\n Nick Miroff:<\/strong> The United States government, you know, by and large, takes care of children and affords them a special treatment regardless of how they enter the country, even if they enter illegally.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> That\u2019s Nick Miroff, an Atlantic<\/em> staff writer who covers immigration.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> There was no need for them to try to evade capture by the U.S. Border Patrol. As minors, they could simply cross over and seek out the first Border Patrol agent they could find, turn themselves in, and knowingly be treated differently than other illegal border crossers.<\/p>\n Because there have been some very horrible cases of deaths of children in U.S. Border Patrol custody, Border Patrol agents\u2014who are effectively border cops\u2014know that they have to be careful and handle these children with sensitivity, and they generally do.<\/p>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The way the system is currently set up: Children who cross the border without a parent find their way to a Border Patrol agent, who then quickly turns them over to another agency, called the Office of Refugee Resettlement, or ORR. ORR tries to place them quickly with a sponsor, who\u2019s typically a relative.<\/p>\n ORR is part of Health and Human Services, the idea being to keep minors out of the ICE system. Or that was the idea, before the Trump administration.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> They have, for the longest time, wanted to kind of break down that firewall between ICE\u2014Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2014which is looking to arrest and deport immigrants who are here illegally, and Health and Human Services, whose mandate is to take good care of these kids, make sure nothing happens to them, get them to sponsors safely.<\/p>\n You know, it\u2019s a pivot toward an all-out, kind of enforcement-only-oriented model whose goal is to, you know, carry out the president\u2019s mass-deportation campaign and, really, to break up the model that has been in place for much of the past 10 years.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> What specifically are they doing to break up the model?<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> They have stripped the funding for the legal-aid organizations that represent children and minors in federal custody and have worked with them. You know, they\u2019ve just really deprived the system of resources.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>One of those was the nonprofit that funds Asiyah\u2019s office. Earlier this year, as part of an executive order titled \u201cProtecting the American People Against Invasion,\u201d funding was cut and these legal-service providers received a stop-work order, which would have affected about 26,000 kids.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> Conservatives have been very adamant that federal tax dollars should not go to defend and advocate for illegal immigrants and to help them get funding to stay in the United States.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> \u200aLegal-aid groups went to court, citing a law passed by Congress in 2008 creating certain protections for unaccompanied minors. A federal judge in California ordered the funding temporarily restored until a final judgment expected in September.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> If it happens again or if the litigation doesn\u2019t work the way we want it to, it\u2019s going to be very difficult to help these kids.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> What percent of your funding is this government funding?<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> 99.9 percent. Yeah. It\u2019s a lot. We do have some private backing, but the needs are so great that it\u2019s just not feasible to move forward without programmatic funding.<\/p>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Miroff: <\/strong>\u200aThere aren\u2019t the resources to hire lawyers for every single person that comes across and makes a claim. We\u2019re talking about hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors, just in the Biden administration.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The Trump administration says it wants to save money. Another reason to cut the funding might be that it\u2019s effective. It increases the chance that the kids get legal status.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> If a person has a lawyer, they\u2019re five times more likely to win their immigration case. So these kids qualify for legal status. They just need someone to guide them on the path.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> And just to clarify, five times as likely does not add up to likely.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> How hard is it to get asylum? Like, what percent of people who apply for asylum get asylum?<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> Well, for immigration court in Atlanta, it\u2019s less than 2 percent approved.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Oh. It\u2019s really hard.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> And so nationwide, if a person does not have an immigration attorney, they\u2019re five times more likely to lose.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Asylum is a many-step process. It can take years and years. And all of it is predicated on proving convincingly that you\u2019ve been persecuted in your own country.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> We do have kids who have physical scars of what happened to them, why they had to flee their home country. You know, we have kids who were beaten by military in their home country because of who they\u2019re affiliated with or who their parents or extended families are affiliated with.<\/p>\n I mean, just for example, we had a 14-year-old who had a six-week-old child, and that\u2019s because she was fleeing extreme danger in her home country, and then she was assaulted on the way over.<\/p>\n So that\u2019s the type of cruelty that our clients are facing. We really do see some graphic signs of violence and abuse.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Absent the obvious signs, the lawyers have to find a way to get kids to describe what they\u2019ve been through.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> So we just, you know, try to get some information from the kids. And we had a little 4-year-old who, every time, we asked her just some basic questions, but she would get scared and turn off the lights and hide under the table.<\/p>\n And so then she had a little fake phone, and so she would hand the phone to the little girl and ask the questions and go back and forth. But a lot of the kids are so\u2014they just don\u2019t wanna discuss what\u2019s happened in the past, whether they\u2019re very young or very\u2014you know, older. So we spend a lot of time to not re-traumatize them, hopefully.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The majority of the kids who go through the system are preteens or teens. The boy we met in the office that day crossed the border with his younger sister. They were 5 and 2 when Asiyah first met them.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> What was the most difficult, at least for us, was trying to talk to them about what happened to them. The little girl couldn\u2019t share any information, of course, because she was only 2 years old. But the older child, the 5-year-old, he was able to express fear but not exactly what happened.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Here is what she learned: The family was targeted by gangs and experienced severe violence in their home country. They made it to the U.S.-Mexico border, but the situation there became dangerous for the kids. So the mother sent them ahead with a group crossing to the U.S. She had to wait for her own papers.<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> They had to cross in a makeshift raft, and they fell into the river, and they were fished out.<\/p>\n And so the children were\u2014I keep using the word traumatized<\/em>\u2014were deeply traumatized. But you could tell from the Office of Refugee Resettlement documents\u2014because usually the kids are pretty calm when it\u2019s time for them to take their picture\u2014because there\u2019s a little passport photo that\u2019s attached.<\/p>\n And the kids were just crying<\/em>. You could tell in the photo that they were sobbing in the photo.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> To help kids understand the process and feel safe enough to tell their story, Asiyah and her staff try to make their Atlanta offices as child friendly as they can. During our visit, the siblings sat in a room full of toys and stuffed animals, including a cow named Vaca Lola, and they tried very hard to sit still while they received what\u2019s called a \u201cKnow Your Rights\u201d presentation.<\/p>\n Legal assistant:<\/strong> Te voy a hacer unas preguntas. Yo soy una de las asistentes legales aqu\u00ed que est\u00e1 trabajando en tu caso.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>An IRC legal assistant talks with them as they squirm on two beanbag chairs. As unaccompanied minors, the brother and sister need to know the basics about their rights and about the legal process. But the result is like a surreal kindergarten law school, where little kids are learning about things like attorney-client confidentiality.<\/p>\n Legal assistant: <\/strong>Tenemos una especial relaci\u00f3n contigo que se llama confidencialidad<\/em>.<\/p>\n Girl:<\/strong> (Indecipherable.<\/em>)<\/p>\n Legal assistant: <\/strong>Uh-huh. \u00bfLo puedes decir?<\/p>\n Girl:<\/strong> S\u00ed.<\/p>\n Legal assistant: <\/strong>Con-fi-den-cia-li-dad. \u00bfLo puedes decir?<\/p>\n Boy: <\/strong>S\u00ed. Confidencialidad.<\/p>\n Legal assistant: <\/strong>Muy bien! S\u00ed, confidencialidad. Lo que significa es que nosotros siempre tenemos que obtener tu permiso para compartir tu informaci\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Being there in the room really underlines how absurd it is to think of kids like this navigating this situation without an attorney. The staffer asks the kids if they remember what a lawyer does. The little girl answers, I want Vaca Lola<\/em>.<\/p>\n Legal assistant:<\/strong> \u00bfTe recuerdas lo que hace un abogado?<\/p>\n Girl:<\/strong> S\u00ed.<\/p>\n Legal assistant:<\/strong> \u00bfS\u00ed? \u00bfQu\u00e9 hace?<\/p>\n Girl:<\/strong> Una Vaca Lola.<\/p>\n Legal assistant:<\/strong> \u00bfEllos qu\u00e9?<\/p>\n Girl:<\/strong> La Vaca Lola.<\/p>\n Legal assistant:<\/strong> \u00bfLa Vaca Lola? Ellos tienen a veces una Vaca Lola.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> After the break: How the system isn\u2019t just getting defunded\u2014it\u2019s being turned against the people it\u2019s supposed to help.<\/p>\n [Break<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The U.S. immigration system as it currently stands has two goals. One: to manage immigration itself\u2014who gets to enter the country, when, where, and for how long. The other is to ensure the welfare of children that cross the border: Make sure they\u2019re not subject to trafficking, bring them to safety, return them to relatives once those relatives have been vetted as so-called sponsors.<\/p>\n As Nick Miroff describes, those two goals are sometimes in tension.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> Up until now, there has existed basically, you know, a firewall between the sponsorship process and immigration enforcement by ICE, the idea being that if you have a kid in custody and you\u2019re looking for a sponsor in order to get them out of government custody, then you shouldn\u2019t have that sponsor fear arrest and deportation by coming forward and saying, I will take custody of this child<\/em>.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The idea was to make it as easy as possible for a sponsor to come forward, so the child would be safe. But that idea seems to be fading.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> Stephen Miller and the aides around him who are leading this broader immigration crackdown have had in their sights, for a long time, this system of unaccompanied minors who are crossing the border, are going through the sponsorship process, and in many cases are being reunited with their relatives who are already here. They view this system as basically a broader kind of trafficking scheme, and they want to attack it at its weak point, so to speak.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> That weak point is reunification: the moment where the government has your child, and you have to show proof in order to get them back. Under the Trump administration, the requirements have changed. Before, a sponsor might have taken a DNA test to prove they were related to the child. Now, though, they\u2019re required to take a DNA test. And they also need to prove that they\u2019re living and working in the U.S. legally, which means they have to show an American ID or a foreign passport with proof of entry. It means proof of income, like a letter from an employer.<\/p>\n The way the Trump administration explains these changes, they are protecting children from being picked up by people who don\u2019t have their best interests at heart. But there are signs that in practice, these changes are keeping kids from landing in a safe place.<\/p>\n Our colleague Stephanie McCrummen reported that one family had submitted baby photos, baptism records, text messages\u2014all to try to get their kid back, and all not enough. As she reported, the family had been rejected for three months and counting.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> And obviously, the concern is that if sponsors are too scared to come forward and take custody of the child, then the child will remain, you know, in the custody of the government for far longer than they should.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> Just that already appears to be happening. It varies from case to case, but the Office of Refugee Resettlement has typically housed an unaccompanied minor for about a month before they\u2019re released to a sponsor. After Trump took office, the average stay for children released each month started rising: 49 days, 112 days, 217 days\u2014all in facilities never intended to house children for so long.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> As we know, in a lot of these group-home settings, it can be very stressful. It\u2019s not a good environment for children. There\u2019s tons of, you know, pediatric literature about the impact on the psychology of children to be, you know, kept essentially in a kind of, you know, government custody in which they\u2019re, you know, living under very strict rules, and they\u2019re separated from their loved ones.<\/p>\n And so, you know, no one, until now, has really wanted to prolong this process. But I think with this administration, we\u2019re seeing a willingness to do that and to really try to deter families from potentially using this route in order to do the kind of phased migration that they\u2019re so opposed to.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> For Trump officials who want to slow the pipeline of unaccompanied minors, it\u2019s a win-win: Either families get their kids, and the government gets data they could use to pursue immigration enforcement, or they don\u2019t get their kids, and the pain of the situation creates deterrence on its own.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a kind of Family Separation 2.0, one that seems more carefully constructed than the first one. Americans aren\u2019t regularly seeing children in what look like cages, or videos of agents taking babies from their mothers. Instead, it uses the system that already exists, and it generally does so away from cameras and microphones.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> You know, preventing them from reuniting is part of an enforcement mindset that is similar to zero-tolerance family separation, in that there\u2019s a willingness here to, you know, potentially inflict trauma on children to achieve an immigration-enforcement purpose or some kind of deterrence.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the same thing as physically pulling a child away from its parent at the border. But the willingness to leave a child in a group home in the government\u2019s custody for weeks and weeks and weeks, and scare their parents into not coming to get them, is also a serious thing.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>The White House says they are doing this in the name of child welfare. And children getting exploited is<\/em> in fact a vulnerability of the system.<\/p>\n In 2023, a New York Times<\/em> investigation showed that amid a huge influx of unaccompanied minors, many ended up working unsafe jobs in places like factories and slaughterhouses. They also showed that in 2021 and 2022, the Office of Refugee Resettlement couldn\u2019t reach more than 85,000 children.<\/p>\n Now, that was during a period when the system was overwhelmed by a huge influx of unaccompanied minors. But losing contact like that simply meant they couldn\u2019t easily reach the kids by phone, which could happen for any number of reasons. And ultimately, it\u2019s maybe not so surprising that a family that got their child back has less reason to pick up when the federal government calls.<\/p>\n During his campaign, though, Trump spun these statistics into a much more sinister, and much more certain, story.<\/p>\n Donald Trump:<\/strong> 88,000 children are missing. You know that? Eighty-eight thousand. Think of that\u201488,000 children are missing under this administration, and they have no idea.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>In a matter of weeks, Trump\u2019s number grew.<\/p>\n Trump:<\/strong> The Biden-Harris administration has lost track of an estimated 150,000 children, many of whom have undoubtedly been raped, trafficked, killed, or horribly abused. Think of it: 150,000 children are missing.<\/p>\n Trump: <\/strong>Three hundred and twenty-five thousand children are missing. Many are dead. Many are involved in sex operations. Many are working as slaves in different parts of probably this country and probably many others.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>Now in his current immigration crackdown, the administration has leaned into this story as a rationale for how it\u2019s treating undocumented minors.<\/p>\n Sarwari: <\/strong>And what\u2019s frustrating with that is that I think on both sides, everybody believes that there should be anti-trafficking initiatives. But our program is an anti-trafficking initiative. If these kids have a way forward, if they have a legal status, they\u2019re less likely to be put in dangerous situations.<\/p>\n Miroff:<\/strong> We have seen Tom Homan, the White House border czar, in particular, talking about \u201cfinding\u201d the children. He has told me in interviews that this is as much a priority for him as carrying out the president\u2019s mass-deportation campaign, and that he believes that hundreds of thousands of minors have been trafficked into the United States and may be in danger, and that he wants to mobilize the resources of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security to do, essentially, wellness checks on this group to make sure that they\u2019re not in some kind of danger.<\/p>\n However, I think that, you know, the underlying message of those checks by the authorities is very clear in that, you know, it\u2019s part of this broader effort that they have going to gather information on families living in the United States illegally, who have come across illegally, who have participated in some of these arrangements, so that they can take enforcement action against them.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> The wellness checks are done by ICE but carried out with help from a hodgepodge of law enforcement, including the FBI and even the DEA. Asiyah told us that some clients her team works with have had agents show up at their door.<\/p>\n Sarwari: <\/strong>What\u2019s happening now is: There are these wellness checks where people from various law-enforcement agencies show up at the sponsors\u2019 homes, bang on the doors. They\u2019re masked. They don\u2019t show any identification. And also, the wellness people who are conducting the wellness checks are not contacting us, their attorneys, so we can provide them the information that they need.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> And then, so what is the purpose then, do you think?<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> To frighten them, I guess. Because we have reached out. We\u2019ve had other clients who have had wellness checks, and we\u2019ve driven out to go speak to whoever is there, but then they\u2019re gone by the time we get there, and then we leave our information. Nobody will contact us.<\/p>\n There doesn\u2019t seem to be any rhyme or reason to them, and it\u2019s not making anybody safer. What if it\u2019s just some strange person who is not affiliated with law-enforcement agencies? None of them show any badges. None of them show any official paperwork. They\u2019re masked. How are we supposed to know that one person is a law-enforcement agent versus a bad actor?<\/p>\n We\u2019re not hiding our clients. So it just doesn\u2019t seem to result in what they want. It\u2019s not really a wellness check.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> About the wellness checks, which the White House officially calls a \u201cnational child welfare initiative,\u201d an ICE spokesperson said in a statement, \u201cOur agents are doing what they should\u2019ve been doing all along: protecting children.\u201d<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> I\u2019m trying to think of this from an oppositional point of view. Like, if I\u2019m listening to this and thinking, like, Why should the U.S. government provide funding for lawyers for people who cross unlawfully?<\/em><\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> Well, I would say this is the overall focus, is: The kids need help, and we\u2019re able to provide this help. We\u2019re trying to protect children. But then I also say seeking asylum is a basic human right. These kids and their sponsors, their parents or whoever is guiding them, they\u2019re trying to do things the right way. Most of them qualify for legal status. They just need someone to guide them on the path.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> And when you say doing \u201cthings the right way,\u201d what do you mean?<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> Well, you know, I use this phrasing because I\u2019ve heard this, but the \u201cright way\u201d is that they have presented themselves to the government. They\u2019re not hiding. They are trying to find a legal status.<\/p>\n Rosin:<\/strong> I think about this, often just kind of\u2014What is the nature of a country that opens itself up for asylum, versus the nature of a country that doesn\u2019t?<\/em> Like, what decision are you making when you decide, Oh, yes, we are a country that\u2019s going to, you know, support a process, a legal process through which you can apply for asylum<\/em>? Like, what does that say about you as a country, versus if you\u2014just, many countries don\u2019t?<\/p>\n Sarwari:<\/strong> Well, and I also think that if you look at the other countries, they don\u2019t have the opportunity. It\u2019s not safe there either for them to seek asylum. So they really are coming to the first country that they\u2019re able to have some semblance of safety.<\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>In this family\u2019s case, that\u2019s the country they came to, one where a system of protections was in place, where they had an attorney to guide them, a known asylum process, even if not an easy one.<\/p>\n But now, the game has changed.<\/p>\n [Music<\/em>]<\/strong><\/p>\n Rosin: <\/strong>This episode of Radio Atlantic<\/em> was produced by Kevin Townsend. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid. Erica Huang engineered. Rob Smierciak provided original music. And Sara Krolewski fact-checked. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic<\/em> audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.<\/p>\n Listeners, if you like what you hear on Radio Atlantic<\/em>, you can support our work and the work of all Atlantic<\/em> journalists when you subscribe to The Atlantic<\/em> at TheAtlantic.com\/listener.<\/p>\n I\u2019m Hanna Rosin. Thanks for listening.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Overcast | Pocket Casts In the Trump administration\u2019s recent round of immigration crackdown, the American public hasn\u2019t seen the same terrible images of migrant children at the border being snatched from their mother\u2019s arms, as they did during his first administration. But that\u2019s because family separation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12175,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[2906,1210,5743],"class_list":{"0":"post-12174","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-family","9":"tag-kind","10":"tag-separation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12174"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12174\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}