As grateful as we were to see Felipe, Anton, and Victoria together again, it is impossible not to lament the trauma they have faced, and the tremendous amount of resources it required to ensure that they have an opportunity to apply for asylum—a right the federal government should have honored when the family first encountered immigration officers and expressed a fear of returning to their home in Colombia. Remember, asylum is a right under international and domestic law. As immigration lawyers, we’d hoped the nightmare of family separation had ended. We are, after all, two years into the administration of a president who had promised to abandon the inhumane anti-immigrant agenda of his predecessor. Soon after taking office, President Biden even created a task force to reunite families who had been separated under Trump. But since then, the president’s actions have increasingly mirrored those of the prior administration, from blocking settlement negotiations with the victims of the 2018 separations to expanding or reintroducing policies that effectively dismantle the U.S. asylum system. Felipe’s reunion with his parents was the culmination of hundreds of hours of advocacy by legal teams at NIJC. We represented Felipe through NIJC’s Immigrant Children’s Protection Project and his parents Victoria and Anton through NIJC’s Family Integrity Project. After Felipe was taken from them, Victoria and Anton were sent to separate federal prisons and subjected to criminal prosecution for crossing the U.S. border without authorization. Anton completed his six-month sentence in November and was released and reunited with Felipe, but Victoria was forced to spend an additional two long months away from her family before the government transferred her to an immigration detention center and then released her four days later. “We passed through very difficult moments being separated,” Victoria told us after she was finally released and reunited with her son and husband. “It was only them [our attorneys] who knew what was happening to us. We are so grateful for everything that everyone has done for us. What is happening to families who are coming to this country for safety is not just.” After all they have endured, Felipe and his parents are now just at the very beginning of their asylum process. Long after separated families’ cases leave the headlines, the complex work of building their legal claims continues. Victoria and Anton likely will not see an immigration judge for years due to backlogs in the immigration court system. Governments around the world are grappling with a rising number of people seeking new homes after being forcibly displaced by political and social oppression. The United States has an obligation—under both international and domestic law—to create better systems to welcome people who arrive at our borders seeking safety, rather than punishing them or blocking them altogether. NIJC has been calling on the Biden administration and Congress to reset its course and uphold its human rights obligations at the U.S.-Mexico border. The government must stop spending billions to fund border militarization and prisons, and instead should direct taxpayer’s money toward restoring a humane asylum processing system and supporting non-governmental and community-based organizations that provide social services and legal aid. U.S. communities are already doing the work of welcoming asylum seekers, and have been carrying the overwhelming weight of the federal government’s failure to do its part. Here are 3 ways to get involved: - Read and share NIJC’s recommendations for 5 steps the U.S. government should take to humanely welcome asylum seekers.
 - Contact your Senators and House representatives and ask them to vote to move funds away from detention and enforcement and toward asylum processing and humanitarian needs in the federal budget for fiscal year 2024. Get contact info for your members of Congress.
- Are you an attorney? Join NIJC as a pro bono attorney to represent people like Felipe, Victoria, and Anton, who are seeking justice in our country’s broken immigration system.
Thank you for your partnership to defend human rights. Colleen Kilbride, senior attorney, NIJC’s Family Integrity Project
Marie Silver, managing attorney, NIJC’s Immigrant Children’s Protection Project | 
