The Babies Left Behind in America

The United States is deporting parents without their children, creating a whole new family-separation crisis. Caitlin Dickerson, whose coverage of family separation during the first Trump administration won her a Pulitzer Prize, spends time with parents desperate to be reunited with their kids, ad hoc caretakers stretched to the breaking point, and lawyers working non-stop to mitigate the trauma Trump 2.0 is inflicting on families. And then there are the children themselves:

A father named Edwin said that after three years of meticulously following the government’s requests to further his family’s asylum case, his wife, Sarah, was thinking about going into hiding; she didn’t want to be picked up by ICE and have to leave her children alone.

When I went to visit Sarah in May, in a Dallas suburb, her 4-year-old son, Johnny, answered the door and asked me: “Do you know when my dad is coming home?”

Before I could answer, Johnny continued: “Do you know what happened to him?” He repeated versions of these questions over the two days of my visit. “Do you know where my dad is? Do you know if he’s okay?”

When the questions would start, Johnny’s 12-year-old sister, Katie, tried to distract him with coloring books and screens. Recently, he’d had an hours-long meltdown when Sarah tried to donate some of Edwin’s work clothes that were crowding the closet. Every afternoon he sits at the front window waiting for his dad’s truck to pull up outside.