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Three years after the Trump administration started separating immigrant families arriving on the southern border, lawyers say they still havent been able to reach the parents of 545 affected children, according to court documents filed Tuesday night.

Some of the children involved may never see their parents again. Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union said that they still cannot find the parents of 283 children despite thorough on-the-ground searches, and dont expect to be able to reach them by telephone, meaning that the families may never be reunited.

Many of the families involved were separated in 2017, before the Trump administration began separating immigrant families routinely, hoping to deter immigrants from crossing the border without authorization.

The children have been released to sponsors, who are typically family members or friends, but also include foster families. Their parents, two-thirds of whom were deported before a federal judge ordered that they be identified and reunited with their children in 2018, either have not been located or have not been successfully contacted.

The group Justice in Motion is continuing to work to locate the parents in Mexico and Central America, though that has become more difficult amid the pandemic.

While we have already located many deported parents, there are hundreds more who we are still trying to reach, the group said in a statement. Its an arduous and time-consuming process on a good day.

The news underscores the devastating long-term effects of the Trump administrations policy. But even in cases in which lawyers expect to be able to find the parents eventually, families may never fully recover from the long-term psychological harm.

Beginning in mid-2017, the federal government ran a pilot program in El Paso, Texas, under which it began filing criminal charges against anyone who crossed the border without authorization, including parents with minor children even though many of them intended to seek asylum in the US, which is legal.

Parents were sent to immigration detention to await deportation proceedings. Their children, meanwhile, were sent to separate facilities operated by Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement and, in some cases, released to other family members in the US or to foster homes. (Previous administrations, in most cases, would have simply released the families from detention.)

The Trump administration formalized the policy in May 2018, which it dubbed the zero tolerance policy. At least 5,000 families were separated before a California federal court ordered the federal government in June 2018 to reunify the families affected and end the policy.

The federal government, however, neglected to link the children to their parents in its databases, making the reunification process difficult, especially in the hundreds of cases of children who were under the age of 5, including one who was just 4 months old.

Unlike the Trump administration, the Obama administration did not have a policy of separating families, but it did try to detain families together on a wide scale and deport them as quickly as possible during the 2014 migrant crisis. Cecilia Muoz, director of the Obama administrations Domestic Policy Council, told the New York Times in 2018 that the administration had briefly considered pursuing family separations but quickly dropped the idea.

We spent five minutes thinking it through and concluded that it was a bad idea, she told the Times. The morality of it was clear thats not who we are.

Senior Trump administration officials, including former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, have repeatedly denied that they pursued a policy of family separation. Nielsen told Congress in December 2018 that the administration never had a policy for family separation. It was later revealed that she had, in fact, signed a memo greenlighting the practice, which clearly stated that DHS could permissibly direct the separation of parents or legal guardians and minors held in immigration detention so that the parent or legal guardian can be prosecuted.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, the administration has tried to carry out what immigrant advocates call a new kind of family separation. It pressured parents already detained within the US to voluntarily separate from their children by presenting them with what the administration has called a binary choice: Either allow their children to be placed with relatives or a foster family in the US while the parents remain detained, or stay together as a family in indefinite detention and risk contracting the coronavirus.

The US government has long known the psychological harms associated with separating family members. These harms would only add to the anxiety created by the pandemic as immigrants and their children fight for their release from detention.

Commander Jonathan White, who previously oversaw the governments program providing care to unaccompanied immigrant children, told Congress that, beginning in February 2017, he had repeatedly warned the officials who concocted the policy that it would likely cause significant potential for traumatic psychological injury to the child.

A September 2019 government watchdog report confirmed those effects, finding that immigrant children who entered government custody in 2018 frequently experienced intense trauma and those who were unexpectedly separated from a parent even more so.

Each child reacts to family separation differently. But psychologists have observed three main kinds of effects: disruptions to their social attachments, increases in their emotional vulnerability, and, in some cases, post-traumatic stress disorder, Lauren Fasig Caldwell, director of the American Psychological Associations children, youth, and families office, said.

Those symptoms could be short-term or they could persist; they could also not even manifest until a child enters their teen years or adulthood. Any of them could significantly hinder a childs later success in academics and in the workplace.

Parents who were separated from their children have experienced their own trauma which may manifest in symptoms similar to those that researchers observe in children and may not have the mental and emotional capacity to be able to provide what their children need.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan went on another bombastic rant on Saturday claiming that his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron needs mental treatment.

What is Macrons problem with Islam and Muslims? He needs mental health treatment, Erdoan said at the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) congress in central Kesareia (, Turkish: Kayseri) province.

What can be said to a head of state that treats millions of members of a religious minority in his country this way? First of all, (he needs) a mental check, Erdoan added, without sensing the irony of his continuous policy of converting Greek Orthodox Churches in Turkey into mosques.

Radical Islam has become an increasing problem in France with terrorist attacks increasing in volume, especially after the 2015 migrant crisis.

Last Fridays beheading of Samuel Paty for showing cartoons of Muhammed, Islams founder, sent shockwaves across France.

Shortly after the murder, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his country would dissolve the Cheikh Yassin Collective, a pro-Hamas group, following a video released by its founder thatinsulted the history teacher.

Avi Pazner, Israels former ambassador to France said:

Up until recently, France has been reluctant to deal with the problem. Even more so, every time there was a terror attack, they were afraid to articulate the words: Islamic terror, preferring to phrase it differently.

The feeling of discrimination created a fertile ground for Muslim radicalism because youths frustrated with their lack of integration first started seeking the company of each other and then they started attending Islamic centres and mosques that have been offering them quite a different solution to their problems, said the former diplomat.

In a bid to purge radical Islam from France, Muslim Brotherhood associated mosques have been shut down, the likely source of the Turkish Presidents wrath as he is one of the main backers of the extremist group.

Erdoan did not only leave his hate-filled rhetoric against Macron, but also took aim against his German allies and accused them fascism because of the police raid on a Berlin mosque.

European fascism reaches a new level with such attacks on their own citizens, he said.

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Erdoan Says Macron Needs Mental Health Treatment For Having A "problem With Muslims" - GreekCityTimes.com

Written by Om Marathe, Edited by Explained Desk | New Delhi | Updated: October 25, 2020 12:48:53 pmChildren stand by the sea at the Kara Tepe refugee camp, on the northeastern Aegean island of Lesbos, Greece, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020. (AP Photo: Panagiotis Balaskas)

Greece on Monday said it would be extending a wall along its border with Turkey to prevent potential mass crossings by migrants into its territory.

The move, seen as the latest sign of fast deteriorating relations between Greece, a European Union member, and Turkey, a candidate for EU membership, comes months after a spike in border tensions after Turkey said it would not be stopping refugees from crossing into Europe.

Additionally, on Tuesday, the Greek foreign ministry was reported to have written to the EU to consider suspending its custom union agreement with Turkey, which has been in force since 1996. A Bloomberg report also said Greece had called on three EU partners, including Germany, to halt arms exports to Turkey.

Relations between the NATO allies, which have been contentious for decades, have nosedived this year; the two countries have been bickering over a range of issues, including refugees, oil exploration and the Hagia Sophia monument.

Since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, vast numbers of displaced Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey. According to the latest known figures, Turkey hosts some 37 lakh refugees from Syria, and is feeling the socio-economic and political strain of their presence in the country.

In 2015, the refugee crisis reached its peak as thousands drowned while attempting to cross over to the West using water routes. Around 10 lakh reached Greece and Italy.

In 2016, Turkey agreed to prevent migrants from crossing into the EU, and the bloc in return promised funds to help the former manage the refugees on its soil.

However, in February this year, Turkey said it would not be honouring the 2016 agreement, asserting its inability to sustain another refugee wave. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he would be opening the doors with Greece for migrants to cross through.

Critics blamed Turkey for using the migrant issue as a means to bring its western allies on board with its military campaign in Syrias Idlib province, where hostilities had escalated in preceding weeks.

Greece said the migrants were being manipulated as pawns by Turkey, which in turn accused Greece of illegally pushing back migrants from reaching its island territories.

Subsequently, in March, thousands of migrants sought to enter Europe through Greece and Bulgaria, but numbers fell sharply due to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and tougher border policing.

Now, the Greek government has said it would extend its already existing 10 km long wall with Turkey by an additional 26 km by the end of April 2021, spending EUR 63 million on the project.

Turbulent ties that are worsening

For centuries, Turkey and Greece have shared a chequered history. Greece won independence from modern Turkeys precursor, the Ottoman Empire, in 1830. In 1923, the two countries exchanged their Muslim and Christian populations a migration whose scale has only been surpassed in history by the Partition of India.

The two nations continue to oppose each other on the decades-old Cyprus conflict, and on two occasions have almost gone to war over exploration rights in the Aegean Sea.

Both countries are, however, part of the 30-member NATO alliance, and Turkey is officially a candidate for full membership of the European Union, of which Greece is a constituent.

Also in Explained | Why the US and UK believe Russia is planning a cyber attack on Tokyo Olympics

The Eastern Mediterranean dispute

For 40 years, Turkey and Greece have disagreed over rights to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, which covers significant oil and gas deposits.

Increasingly assertive under President Erdogan, Turkey in July announced that its drilling ship Oruc Reis would be exploring a disputed part of the sea for oil and gas. Greece responded by placing its air force, navy and coastguard on high alert.

After negotiations, the Turkish vessel retreated in September, but earlier this month resumed its voyage, conducting seismic surveys near the Greek island of Kastellorizo.

Athens, which considers the waters surrounding the island its own, has described the ships movements as a direct threat to peace in the region. A signatory of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it maintains that its continental shelf should be calculated while considering its island territories in the Eastern Mediterranean.

On its part, Ankara, which has not signed UNCLOS, argues a nations continental shelf should be calculated from its mainland, and maintained that Oruc Reiss activity was fully within Turkish continental shelf. Follow Express Explained on Telegram

The Hagia Sophia row

Greece was also irked this year after Turkey ordered the centuries-old Hagia Sophia, a UNESCO World Heritage site, open to Muslim worship in July.

The Hagia Sophia was originally a cathedral in the Byzantine Empire before it was turned into a mosque in 1453, when Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmet IIs Ottoman forces. In the 1930s, however, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, shut down the mosque and turned it into a museum in an attempt to make the country more secular.

Many Greeks continue to revere the Hagia Sophia, and view it as a key part of Orthodox Christianity.

On July 24, when Friday prayers were held at the Hagia Sophia for the first time in 90 years, church bells tolled across Greece in protest, and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis called the sites conversion an affront to civilisation of the 21st century, describing Turkeys move as a proof of weakness.

Turkeys foreign ministry hit back, saying, Greece showed once again its enmity towards Islam and Turkey with the excuse of reacting to Hagia Sophia Mosque being opened to prayers.

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Explained: Why Greece wants to extend the wall along its border with Turkey - The Indian Express

Journalists Dibyaudh Das and Sruthin Lal travelled from Delhi to Lucknow in May to cover the displacement of migrant labourers in Uttar Pradesh. The stories the duo covered in their 600-km cycle journey that lasted 12 days have been released as a three-part documentary series, titled Corona Cyclips.

Sruthin and Dibyaudh hadnt cycled since their school days. The idea for a 600 km ride, the latter admits, was supposed to stay as an idea. I thought Ill just suggest this crazy idea in the newsroom meeting and thats it. But Sruthin (associate editor) was also excited about it. He came up with a workable plan. The company approved it. And, the two journalists were on their way.

The journey, amidst a heatwave and a raging pandemic, was expectedly arduous. My whole body was sore after the first day, says Dibyaudh, But we were live-blogging our journey. We shared stories of people who were in need of help. And, we noticed immediate feedback and a lot of people got help. So, that kept us going.

The reverse migration of labourers from cities to their hometowns was largely a story of heartbreak. Tens and thousands of them traveled over 100 miles on foot, without food, for days. The Guardian called it the greatest exodus since partition. The documentary, apart from capturing this, also covers moments of benevolence. Throughout our journey, we saw people -- Panchayat workers, officials, Dhaba owners -- providing food and water to labourers. In Vrindavan, for instance, we met some villagers who make tulsi malas for a living. Their livelihoods were hit badly due to the lockdown. But they came together to help the migrant labourers. They pooled in money and food grains and fed the people coming into the state, says Sruthin.

Sruthin says travelling in cycles helped them get such stories. He calls it slow journalism, wherein one stops, observes and investigates upon noticing something interesting. His colleague concurs. A lot of people helped us because we were on cycle. I think they could relate to us. Its not the same as getting out of an AC car and putting mics in front of them. It was also easy to access some villages that wouldnt have been possible with bigger vehicles. It saved us from the problem for looking for fuel as well during the lockdown.

Another concern that was at the back of their heads was the COVID-19 disease itself. Back in May, the villages were largely uninfected. Since we were travelling from cities and towns, we were doubly careful about not contracting the virus and spreading it in the villages, says Dibyaudh.

The entire documentary has been filmed using a mobile phone. We carried a tripod. But it wasnt needed much, says Sruthin, You dont need a lot of resources to tell a story. That was the biggest takeaway from our journey. All you need is a mobile phone. With social media, you can create an immediate impact as well.

The labourers stories, Sruthin feels, have been forgotten. The media and the people seem to have moved on from the issue. I hope this documentarys release serves as a reminder.

The three-part series of Corona Cyclips is available on Asiavilles YouTube page

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Corona Cyclips documents the 600-km cycle journey of two journalists covering the migrant labour crisis - The Hindu

Home Secretary Priti Patel visited the port of Dover last weekto gee up the beleaguered Border Force and offer words of encouragement to the British people. 'It is our mission and objective to break this route up,' she told her personal cameraman and tightly-controlled media team. Priti hot footed it out of the docks as soon as the PR stunt was over. Job done for another day. More fake promises of stronger borders by a Conservative party who seem unable to control anything, let alone a porous expanse of water separating England from France.

The reality is we all know whats going on. Not from the mainstream media who eagerly line the dock side waiting for exhausted looking women and children being brought off the boats. We all know the reality from alternative media and independent reporters that have filled the void.

Ive covered the migrant crisis for more than five years and worked on the ground in more than eight countries. Ive visited dozens of refugee camps and illegal migrant encampments. Ive spent hundreds of hours with refugees and migrants listening to their stories and trying to make sense of this crisis. The picture I see in the news does not reflect my experience and that of many others.

Over my time on the refugee trail, Ive noticed that the majority of people making the journey to Europe are males between the age of 18-35. In fact Id estimate up to 85 per cent of the migrant influx is comprised of young men. I always found it difficult to turn on the TV and see women clutching their infants and fathers weeping as they landed on the shores of Greece. Difficult because of the humanitarian empathy that wells up within us all, but also difficult because its not a reality Im seeing on the ground.

What I found over five years across the Balkans and Europe is not whats written about in the papers, its not the stuff that wins journalism awards. Its the painful reality that the refugee crisis is more complex than we are led to believe. 'Everyone who needs asylum should be given a safe place,' a leftist volunteer once told me. Thats true and its a nice notion to live life by, however the reality is starkly different.

What Ive witnessed over the years is people, who by their own admission are not refugees, taking advantage of European gullibility and generosity. In 2015, when Merkel declared anyone who came will be welcomed in Germany, the door was truly opened. A green light lit up across the Middle East, Africa and other more far-flung parts of the world. With the aid of Google and volunteer organisations people knew exactly what type of persecution, sexual persuasion, religious or ethnic identity would secure them a ticket into Europe.

I dont mean to be flippant on the subject of fraudulent asylum claims but it seems all too common. In warehouse refugee camps Ive witnessed men from Egypt studying maps of Damascus to fabricate their identity. Ive seen North Africans all claim to be Syrians and coincidently all from Damascus.

Around a fire on the Serbian-Croatian border Ive shared cigarettes and fruit with middle class, metropolitan Iranians who are taking their chances on reaching Europe. 'We will say we are Christians and suffer problems because of that. I have had friends who say theyre gay and it worked. The funny thing was when he arrived in Berlin they housed him with other gay refugees.'

Countless stories that dont fit the narrative pushed on the evening telly fall by the way side. Violence, drugs, alcohol, disease and criminality are the bleak reality I saw on Europes borders. I shared the hardship to an extent to understand what truly drives people to pack up everything and come to Europe.

Thousands and thousands of genuine refugees suffer in the Balkan barbed wire. More lie restless in stifling, overcrowded camps waiting for their turn to continue onwards to Europe. In the West, we know all of this yet we neglect to have the difficult conversations that are vital moving forwards.

How do we protect public health with an influx of uncontrolled migration? How do we address the elephant in the room: integration? What about family reunification? The numbers are vast! If Germany has six million new arrivals then how many more will come if their families are allowed to join them? How will Europe cope with all these people?

The British public are alarmed by what they see in Dover. Not out of a knee jerk, racist reaction but out of a genuine sense of concern. People have the right to ask questions: Where are these people going to live? What about the school placements? The doctors surgeries? The opportunities to work in an already crumbling economy?

The reality is we all know what we are hearing about the refugee crisis is not the full picture. Its not as clear cut as the London bubble would have us believe.Across the world, there are hundreds of millions who would qualify for EU asylum. The question we are all going to have to ask is how much is enough? How many people can the West really take?

Edward Crawford is afreelance photojournalist and videographer

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The truth about the migrant crisis isn't what you think - Spectator.co.uk