It’s Time to Confront Everyday Family Separation in the United States

By Erin Miles Cloud and Elizabeth Rossi

This week, as many people travel home to be with their loved ones, thousands of families in this country will be denied the opportunity to be together. Whether it is because of the incarceration of a parent or child, the immigration detention system, or the so-called child “welfare” system, countless families will remain separated throughout the holidays. And nothing about this is new. Mass family separation traps families in these systems every year. Yet the devastation these families feel is not yet accompanied by the public outrage it deserves.

Family Separation is a Foundational Feature of the United States

In 2018, with the advent of Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, family separation was at the forefront of the national conversation. Heartbreaking stories from the border rightfully caused immense backlash from experts and the public. Tens of thousands of people, all across the country, took to the streets to demand an end to these policies. The moral and scientific consensus was clear — family separation is unacceptable.

For many people, the idea of family separation remains synonymous with Trump’s horrific border policies. A quick Google search of the term yields hundreds of recent articles and websites that discuss the topic in this context. However, family separation didn’t start in 2018; it is a foundational feature of the United States.

The US Was Founded on Family Separation: Slavery and Settler Colonialism

Like most carceral systems in this country, the roots of family separation can be traced back to slavery. Enslaved Black families were routinely torn apart, with family members being sold to other slave owners and sent to plantations far away never to see each other again. It is estimated that approximately one-third of enslaved children in the upper South experienced some form of family separation in their lives. Parents who were enslaved did not have rights to their children. Legally, their children could be abducted and sold without notice. In fact, images of infants and children being physically torn apart from their parents fueled the abolition movement in the 1800s. The threat of a loved one being sold to another slave owner was widely used as a method to control and punish Black families, much like how the state uses the threat of incarceration and the involvement of ‘child protective services’ to do the same today.

The roots of family separation can also be traced to settler colonialism. Beginning with the Civilization Fund Act of 1819 and the Peace Policy of 1868, the US government adopted a “boarding school” policy with the express goal of forced assimilation of Native children and cultural genocide. In subsequent years, tens of thousands of children were abducted from their homes and sent to these boarding schools, which were more like concentration camps. By 1926, it is estimated that nearly 83% of all school-aged Native children were in institutions. In 1958, as boarding schools started to wind down, the Indian Adoption Project was created, followed by the Adoption Resource Exchange in 1966. These organizations took countless Native children from their families and gave them to non-Native families for adoption. The Indian Child Welfare Act stopped some aspects of these practices in 1978, but the struggle continues. Even today, the state removes Native children from their families at an exponentially higher rate than other children.

Woman and Child on Auction Block (The New York Public Library Digital Collections). Pupils at Carlisle Indian school, Pennsylvania (Texas Beyond History).

Everyday Family Separation: Incarceration and Family Policing

In the US, incarceration is one of the most ubiquitous forms of family separation with approximately 4.5 million children (or 6%) having had a parent incarcerated at some point during their lives. The percentage rises to 10% for Black children and 18% for Native children. The incarceration of parents is so common that in 2016 47% of state prisoners and 57% of federal prisoners reported having minor children. This does not include the thousands of parents detained pretrial across the country.

But the US doesn’t just incarcerate parents, it incarcerates children too. There are over 35,000 children locked up in juvenile detention facilities, with another 2,000 trapped in adult prisons.

Family separation through incarceration is traumatizing in and of itself, but the trauma is exacerbated by cruel visitation policies that limit communication with and access to loved ones. Many jails and prisons around the country have entirely banned in-person visits, prohibiting parents, children, and other loved ones from touching or hugging each other. The only way they can communicate is through glitchy and expensive phone and video calls.

A lesser-discussed tool used by the state to separate families is the child “welfare” system, which is more accurately referred to as the family policing system. Under the guise of care, this system tears families apart, resulting in close to 400,000 children in the foster system being taken annually from their families — overwhelmingly due to their parents’ poverty and inability to provide food, housing, or clothing like jackets and shoes. Black and Native American families are most heavily policed — over 50% of Black children will experience a child protective services investigation before the age of 18, compared to 37.4% across all children. Native children are approximately 3 times more likely to experience the foster system than the general population.

Unfortunately, many families are also caught in the intersection of the criminal legal and family policing systems; in 2021 alone, over 12,000 children entered the foster system due to parental incarceration.

Separation Has Devastating Impacts on Families

Family separation negatively impacts almost every aspect of a child’s health and well-being. Children separated from their families are at higher risk of developing depression, substance use disorder, anxiety, and more. One study even found that the PTSD prevalence among children in the foster system was approximately six times higher than the general public, and almost double that of veterans.

Family separation also impacts a child’s development and educational outcomes. A study found that experiencing paternal incarceration by age nine is linked to lower cognitive skills in elementary school-aged children. Parental incarceration is associated with grade failure, school dropout, low GPA, and other forms of academic underperformance. It also increases the likelihood of special education placement. Additionally, children separated from their families are at higher risk of encountering the criminal legal system, as juveniles and adults.

“Losing a child to government separation feels like losing a child to death, which can adversely affect one’s health.” — Stephen Lee in Family Separation As Slow Death

While there has been extensive research on how family separation harms children, less focus has been placed on the effects separation has on parents. Parents often experience ambiguous loss and a deterioration in their mental and physical health after their child is taken. Mothers have been found to experience a significant increase in rates of anxiety and substance use issues within two years of being separated from their children. Permanently losing custody of a child is so traumatic that it has been termed the “civil death penalty.”

Melanie Cervantes, 2012.

Families Belong Together

As many of us gather around our dinner tables with loved ones, hundreds of thousands of families will remain separated — but numerous organizations, including Civil Rights Corps, are working to change that. Whether done through the immigration, incarceration, or family policing system, family separation inflicts lasting harm on parents and children, and we must join together to end all forms of it.

Learn more about the fight to end family separation from organizers and community members on the ground:

• Black Families Love and Unite
• Elephant Circle
• Families for Justice as Healing
• Free Hearts
• Mandated Reporters Against Mandated Reporting
• Mining For Gold
• MJCF Coalition
• Mother’s Outreach Network
• Movement for Family Power
• Operation Stop CPS
• PLAN Coalition
• Protect ICWA
• Repeal AFSA
• Reimagine Child Safety
• Repeal CAPTA
• Rise Magazine
• Starting Over, Inc.
• upEND Movement

Read more:

• Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families — and How Abolition Can Build a Safer World | Dorothy Roberts
• Confronting the Racist Legacy of the American Child Welfare System: The Case for Abolition | Alan J. Dettlaff
• How 12 states are addressing family separation by incarceration — and why they can and should do more | Prison Policy Institute
• “The Civil Death Penalty” — My Motherhood Is Legally Terminated | Elizabeth Brico
• Battling an Unjust System: How the War on Drugs Stole My Daughter | Dinah Ortiz

Erin Miles Cloud is a Senior Staff Attorney at Civil Rights Corps. She investigates and litigates issues relating to family separation in the criminal-legal and family-regulation systems, and is the mother of two beautiful children.

Elizabeth Rossi is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Civil Rights Corps. She investigates and litigates issues relating to family separation in the criminal-legal and family-regulation systems, and is Mom to a silly, joyful, almost-two-year-old.