Under the Trump administration, more than 5,500 children were forcibly separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the U.S. government’s policies to punish immigrants. When Jacob Soboroff, NBC News and MSNBC correspondent, first saw the conditions in which children were being held by authorities at the border, it was a sight he says he will never forget: “I didn’t fully understand how this could be possible in the United States of America.”
Soboroff’s reporting quickly made him one of the leading voices on what was happening to immigrant children and families. His book, Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, also helped amplify PHR’s own clinical and legal findings that family separation constituted torture. As part of PHR’s 2021 gala celebration, PHR spoke with Soboroff on the importance of medical evidence in bringing abuses to light, and why families who endured this traumatic policy deserve justice.
Miss the livestream of PHR’s 2021 gala? Watch the whole show here!