The United States has always had a complicated relationship with immigrants and immigration, whether legal or illegal.

For years, immigrants have been arrested on the border of Mexico and the United States and taken to detention centers.

While the mistreatment of people in detention centers is nothing new, forcibly separating children from their parents brought a new kind of trauma to those affected. 

When immigrants entered the United States between the summer of 2017 and the summer of 2018 and had children with them, their children were separated from them.

That was the case under the presidency of former President Trump. For an entire year families were forcibly separated, mothers and fathers going weeks and even months with no idea where their children were.

In a one year span, the Trump administration forcibly separated approximately 5,500 children from their parents.

Finally, after a lawsuit against the American government in June 2018, a federal judge ordered the stop of family separations and for those families to be reunited. 

Thousands of families who had been separated were reunited, but during the process, an error was discovered.

While immigrant children were in the custody of the American government, there were parents who were deported back to their home countries without their children.

Immigration authorities now admit not to know the whereabouts of these parents. 

628 children remain without their parents, and while other relatives have been found for some of these children, others still face the very real possibility of never seeing their parents again. 

As of now, the United States government is in the process of putting together a task force with the purpose of reuniting the remaining children with their parents.