ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
President-elect Trump implemented a policy in his last term that is still unresolved today, and it could foreshadow what might come next. We're talking about family separation. Years after that operation ended, more than 1,000 kids taken from their parents at the border still have not been reunited with their families. And the man Trump has named his next border czar, Tom Homan, has been described as the architect of family separation. NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff is the author of the book and executive producer of the documentary "Separated." Welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
JACOB SOBOROFF: Thanks so much.
SHAPIRO: So the Department of Homeland Security separated more than 5,500 children from their families at the border. Why are there still more than a thousand kids who were effectively made orphans by the federal government?
SOBOROFF: As many as 1,360, according to the last status report from the Department of Homeland Security...
SHAPIRO: Wow.
SOBOROFF: ...Because, Ari, the policy was so - and I think it's a generous description - haphazardly implemented and deliberately cruel, even some of the officials today will tell you that the idea was to hurt children and families to scare other people away from coming to this country. And part of that was the systems weren't in place to track and reunite the families once they ultimately separated them. We're still dealing with the consequences of that today.
SHAPIRO: And can you tell us anything about who those 1,300 or so kids are, who their parents are?
SOBOROFF: Kids from all over the world, actually - many of them, as a matter of fact, are here in the United States potentially living with other family members. And their parents were deported at the height of the policy. And even though there's an effort underway by the Biden administration and many members of civil society to literally go door-to-door in Central America and locate these parents, the Republican-appointed - George W. Bush-appointed - judge who stopped this policy, said it was one of the most shameful chapters in the history of our country.
SHAPIRO: What impact do the separations have on the kids who were reunited with their parents?
SOBOROFF: Profound - in a way that I will never - you will never be able to describe this. And even though we made a film, what I hope is that one day, they'll be a Shoah-like project, where all 5,500 children will be able to speak out and tell their own story - in a way that we don't have to wait another 150 years like we did for the U.S. government to apologize for Native American boarding schools or a generation for the sites of Japanese internment camps to become national historic monuments.
SHAPIRO: In an interview with Univision just last year, Donald Trump defended the policy, saying it had the intended impact of deterrence.
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DONALD TRUMP: We did family separation. A lot of people didn't come. It stopped people from coming by the hundreds of thousands because when they hear family separation, they say, well, we better not go, and they didn't go.
SHAPIRO: Is that true? Was it an effective deterrent?
SOBOROFF: No. And people do not come to the United States because it's a walk in the park, like Donald Trump said. They make the most dangerous journey humans can make on planet Earth because of desperate circumstances. But you don't leave your home and take that journey for no reason, and you certainly wouldn't do it in the face of deterrence-based policies that are intended to harm you if you didn't feel like you had to.
SHAPIRO: So let's talk about what the next four years might bring. Trump's new border czar, Tom Homan, has said he, in the next term, would try to deport families together as one unit. Is that even possible considering that more than 10 1/2 million American citizens live in mixed-status families?
SOBOROFF: Yeah. What he's talking about is American citizens leaving the United States with their undocumented family members. Maybe as many as 20 million people live in a household with an undocumented family member living under the same roof. Deporting members of those households results in family separation. And the idea that a U.S. government official would say, they can all just leave together. He's saying, we'll kick American citizens out of the country too - Homan is.
SHAPIRO: To the specific question of - if a mother with a child shows up at the U.S.-Mexico border, is that child going to be taken away from the mother, potentially never to be reunited again? - can you say with confidence that that, at least, is a thing of the past?
SOBOROFF: There was a settlement agreement that was entered between the ACLU and the Biden Justice Department that banned the practice of family separation for eight years under this - what's known as, a consent decree. But there's nothing stopping this incoming Trump administration from attempting to get around that consent decree, just like they got around - ultimately, what the judge says was the U.S. Constitution - by implementing the family separation policy in the first place. There is nothing stopping - because Congress hasn't passed a law banning the practice outright - any administration from implementing a family separation policy again.
SHAPIRO: NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff is executive producer of the documentary "Separated," which is in theaters now, and it's based on his book of the same name. Thank you very much.
SOBOROFF: Thanks, Ari. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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