Trump Administration Kept More Than 69,000 Migrant Children in Custody This Year

The Trump administration held 69,550 migrant children in custody this year. This appears to be the largest number of detained children yet, many of whom were kept away from their parents, according to a new report. This represents a rise of 41% on 2018.

Some 4,000 migrant children remain in U.S. government custody while more continue to arrive week on week. The policy of family separation, which President Donald Trump and his officials have defended, has been blamed for causing long-term trauma.

President Trump campaigned on an immigration crackdown in 2016 and promised to build a border wall. However, the border wall has not been built and the Trump administration’s main contribution to immigration enforcement has been child detention camps, which have been widely condemned as inhumane.

The U.S. government is being sued by some of those affected by family separation. The suit alleges that children separated from their parents have experienced mental trauma and they are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars.

Defenders of the President’s policy have misleadingly claimed that people are crossing the border posing as families and even buying children to bring with them. In fact, only a tiny percentage of family units have proven to be fraudulent, while most are real families desperately fleeing to the U.S.