Migrant families worry over possible family separations if Trump wins

Former President Donald Trump's promise to instrumentality wide deportation if he's reelected has ignited fears of family separations. 

Monica Camacho Perez and her family person lived and worked successful nan United States since coming illegally from Mexico much than 20 years ago. Camacho Perez teaches English arsenic a 2nd connection to migrant adults, and she besides useful successful nan nationalist precocious schools. Her family lives successful Baltimore. 

"We are a normal family, for illustration anybody else," she said. "We spell to church. We activity each day. We salary taxes," she said.

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She's among nan much than 500,000 undocumented immigrants brought to nan state arsenic children who are protected from deportation nether nan Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals programme known arsenic DACA.

"I'm nan only 1 correct now that's, like, protected, while my parents are not, my brothers are not," she said. "My brothers person children that are calved here. So if they were to get deported, what will hap to their kids?"

Would families beryllium separated if Trump's reelected?

When asked whether location was a measurement to transportation retired wide deportations without separating families, Tom Homan, who led migration enforcement during nan first year-and-a-half of nan Trump administration, said, "Of people location is. Families tin beryllium deported together." 

Like Camacho Perez's nieces and nephews, more than 4 cardinal U.S.-born children unrecorded pinch an undocumented parent.

Cecilia Vega pinch Monica Camacho Perez and her family 60 Minutes

Asked why children should person to time off nan state wherever they were calved and raised, Homan said, "Because their genitor perfectly entered nan state illegally, had a kid knowing he was successful nan state illegally. So he created that crisis."

During Homan's clip starring ICE – successful what became 1 of nan astir arguable policies of nan Trump management – astatine slightest 5,000 migrant children were forcibly separated from their parents erstwhile their parents were arrested astatine nan separator and prosecuted for crossing into nan U.S. illegally.

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Asked astir published accounts saying that family separation astatine nan separator was his idea, Homan replied: "Not true. I didn't constitute nan memorandum to abstracted families. I signed nan memo. Why'd I motion nan memo? I was hoping to prevention lives. While you and I are talking correct now, a child's going to dice successful nan border. . . . So we thought, 'so possibly if we prosecute people, they'll extremity coming.'"

Trump has said Homan would beryllium joining him successful nan caller management if he wins a 2nd term. Asked if this family separation argumentation would beryllium re-instituted then, Homan said, "I don't cognize of immoderate general argumentation wherever they're talking astir family separations."

Tom Homan 60 Minutes

Asked whether it should beryllium connected nan table, he replied, "It needs to beryllium considered, absolutely."

How that would hap fixed a court colony reached precocious past twelvemonth betwixt nan national authorities and nan American Civil Liberties Union is unclear. Under nan settlement, nan national authorities is barred from separating migrant families astatine nan separator for nan adjacent 8 years if nan sole intent is to prosecute nan parents for entering nan U.S. illegally. 

"I can't ideate surviving present without them."

Back successful Baltimore, Camacho Perez said she has fixed a batch of thought to what she would do if her parents were deported. Even though Baltimore is wherever she grew up, and she now owns her ain location there, she thinks she would spell backmost to Mexico pinch her parents if they were deported.

"They're besides portion of my American dream," she said. "And I can't ideate surviving present without them."

In:
• U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
• Undocumented Immigrants
• Donald Trump