Separated Families Part of the Continuing Debate Over U.S. Immigration Policy Tatiana Sanchez - San Diego Union Tribune
go to original August 24, 2016

Michael Paulsen kisses his wife Emma Sanchez goodbye as he leaves Tijuana after a visit and returns to his job as an auto mechanic in Vista. Sanchez lives in Tijuana, while her husband and their three sons, Alex, Ryan and Brannon, live in Vista. (Peggy Peattie)

It was 3:30 a.m. when Emma Sanchez kissed her husband goodbye as he left for work one June morning. As Michael Paulsen took the couple’s three children back across the U.S.-Mexico border, Sanchez went back to bed. Hours later, she woke up to an empty two-story house in the outskirts of Tijuana.

The couple has followed the same routine for a decade. Deported to Mexico in 2006, Sanchez has lived on her own in Tijuana while Paulsen and their three young sons, all U.S. citizens, live in California.

Their separated, cross-border lives form part of the national debate over U.S. immigration policy. Activists point to the human cost of U.S. policy that can keep families apart, while critics say the families could stay together if they choose to live in a place where the parents have legal status.

After Being Torn Apart by Immigration, Families Hope to be Reunited (NBC Latino)

In the first half of 2014, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 22,088 unauthorized immigrants who claimed to have at least one U.S.-born child, according to the agency’s most recent data. Experts and activists estimate that hundreds of these parents live in Tijuana.

“The degree to which the family unit and women and children have become the (immigration) flashpoint is without precedent,” said Ev Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego. “Historically, we’ve never had a situation where families have been separated like this.”

Unauthorized immigrant parents were a key element of a plan by Obama to provide deportation relief to as many as five million people. While his plan would not have affected parents such as Sanchez, who have already been deported, it would’ve offered legal protections to parents who remain in the country illegally.

There were about five million children under the age of 18 living with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent between 2009 and 2013, according to a January report by the Migration Policy Institute. An estimated four million of these children were U.S. citizens.

A Supreme Court deadlock in June let stand a lower court decision blocking Obama’s executive action.

Read the rest at San Diego Union Tribune

Related: Trump's Evolving Immigration Plan Compared to Clinton, Obama (Associated Press)

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