The Atlantic

The Moral Failure of Family Separation

To separate children from their parents is an offense against nature and civilized society.
Source: Patrick Semansky / AP

Editor’s Note: This article is one of 50 in a series about Trump's first two years as president.

The fact of what was happening dawned before the scope of it did: In the summer of 2017, immigration lawyers and judges began reporting that parents were arriving at immigrant detention centers without their children, who had been placed in found that some 700 children—many under the age of 4—had been separated from their parents after crossing the southern border illegally with them in the preceding six months, did the extent of the program become clear.

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