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November 2017 Reporting Lomi Kriel of the Houston Chronicle identifies 22 families that have been separated after crossing the border in the El Paso Border Patrol Sector.
February 2018 Ms. L lawsuit is filed. The case challenges the practice of family separation and seeks class certification, benefitting a group of separated families.
April 6, 2018 Attorney General Jeff Sessions orders prosecution of all immigration violations.
May 4, 2018 Following Sessions’ memo, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen orders DHS personnel to categorically refer individuals who have entered the United States without authorization to be referred to the Department of Justice. Per the Sessions memo, this means that those parents will be charged with improper entry, and results in separation of thousands of families.
June 17, 2018 Secretary Nielsen, weeks after mandating family separation, tweets “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.”
June 18, 2018 ProPublica publishes audio of children screaming for their parents while Border Patrol agents crack jokes.
June 20, 2018 President Trump signed an Executive Order mandating the end to categorical family separation.
June 27, 2018 In the Ms. L litigation, Judge Sabraw grants class certification and imposes a preliminary injunction that mandates reunification of separated families by July 26, 2018.
Despite President Trump’s executive order ending the zero-tolerance policy and the resolution of the Ms. L litigation, and after years of efforts from advocates, lawyers, and government agencies, hundreds of children remain separated. In December 2019, the Trump Administration reported that it had separated 1,100 children from their parents since rescinding the policy in June 2018. Media reports on government statistics from 2020 showed that hundreds of children remained separated from their parents. Furthermore, the U.S. government has continued separating families, although not at the levels it did so under the zero-tolerance policy.
