Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis

by Jonathan Blitzer

Thomas Homan, a top official at ICE, first broached the prospect of separating parents and children at the border by charging the adults with a misdemeanor for entering the country illegally. While they were being held on criminal charges, the government would temporarily take custody of their children. It would be painful, he said, but not fatal—a deterrent. This was immediately shot down as inhumane, as was another suggestion that involved ICE arresting parents when they came to claim their children from the Office of Refugee Resettlement. A few advisers, thinking toward longer-term approaches, proposed housing asylum seekers in Mexico with the aid of international relief organizations, rather than trying to detain them in the US. Others suggested mechanisms for handling refugee applications in Central America, to expedite processing and spare vulnerable children from making an overland journey rife with danger.