Venice:
Film legend Errol Morris described the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents by the US government under Donald Trump as “inhumane and cruel”. His new documentary about this policy premiered on Thursday at the Venice Film Festival.
“Do we need borders? Do we need immigration laws? Yes,” the Oscar-winning US director told AFP before the screening of his film “Separated.” “But the idea is that laws should be fair and humane.”
“And this particular policy seemed to me – and still seems to me – inhumane, cruel and mean.”
In 2017, during Donald Trump’s first year as US president, his administration floated the idea of separating children from their parents to prevent illegal immigration – a central plank of his election campaign.
The “zero tolerance” policy, officially introduced in April 2018, allowed for criminal proceedings to be initiated against anyone who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally, resulting in the immediate detention of parents without their children.
According to the documentary, which cites official government figures, at least 4,227 children have been taken away from their parents – and more than 1,000 are still separated from their parents.
“What horrifies me is that they didn’t keep records. They separated the families in a way that could make it impossible to ever reunite them,” said Morris, 76.
The experienced director won an Oscar in 2004 for “The Fog of War,” a surprisingly frank portrayal of the Vietnam War by one of its architects, former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.
Splitting
Morris’ new film – which is being shown out of competition in Venice – is based on a book by US journalist Jacob Soboroff, who helped expose the children’s desperate situation.
“He called me and asked if I knew anyone who would be willing to make a movie out of his book… I volunteered,” Morris said.
The documentary is based largely on statements by Jonathan White, then deputy director of the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), who opposed the policies of his superior, Scott Lloyd, who is also interviewed.
Lawsuits and public outcry, even within Trump’s own Republican Party, forced the administration to stop the separations in mid-2018.
In practice, however, the Trump administration continued to separate families based on a different policy that allowed for the arrest and deportation of illegal parents if they had committed a serious crime.
Ahead of the November presidential election, in which Trump faces Vice President Kamala Harris, immigration remains a highly divisive issue for many Americans.
According to a recently released official US report, the government may have lost track of as many as 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children over the past four years.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)