Trumping Zero Tolerance

The Trump administration began separating migrant families that arrived at the Mexico-U.S.A border in 2017, creating a border crisis with families still separated to this day. A team of researchers, videographers, journalists, and web designers at the University of Connecticut, Syracuse University, and PBS's FRONTLINE chronicled the administration's policy and its repercussions.

The Film

It was the most shocking part of the Trump administration’s "zero tolerance” approach to immigration: family separation. While it was in effect, thousands of children were forcibly taken from their parents as they entered the U.S. In many cases, kids were left behind as their parents were deported. Others were literally lost in the system, with officials unable to match them to their guardians. Now, as a new administration takes over, they face an urgent challenge: how to reunite the hundreds of migrant children who remain separated from their families to this day. Drawing on his years of work within immigrant communities, filmmaker Oscar Guerra (Love, Life & the Virus) chronicles the struggle. With unique access to the families themselves, Guerra tells the story through their eyes, stripping away the politics and noise to create an intimate portrait of the parents who’d sought safety and opportunity in the U.S., only to have their families torn apart.