Evgeny and Evgeniia faced an excruciating choice.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they could leave the United States with their child and return to their native Russia, which they had fled seeking political asylum. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States — but their 8-year-old son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children.
In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family.
“Interior separation is approved,” ICE officials concluded in writing after the couple insisted they could not return to Russia. The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was on May 15, in a room at Kennedy International Airport in New York City, as ICE agents led them back to detention in New Jersey.
“A few days, right?” Maksim begged his parents that day. “A few days?”
The couple, who asked to be identified only by their first names out of fear for their family back in Russia, said they tried to keep their son calm. Maksim pleaded with his father, who told the boy what he wanted to hear. “I said, ‘Yes, yes, it will be just a few days,’” Evgeny said, recounting the moment in an interview.
Their case is an example of a little-known tactic the Trump administration is using to pressure undocumented immigrants to leave the United States. Officials have begun separating children from their families in small numbers across the country, in what appears to be a more targeted version of one of the most explosive policies of President Trump’s first term.
The New York Times has uncovered at least nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders, according to internal government documents, case files and interviews.
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The post Inside Trump’s New Tactic to Separate Immigrant Families appeared first on New York Times.
