The Pause on Deportations Is the First Step Toward a Fair, Humane, and Workable System and Must Move Forward January 27, 2021, 1:01 pm From the earliest days of the Trump administration, extreme and disturbing stories emerged of families and communities being ripped apart by a bolstered and increasingly aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Over the past four years, anyone in the United States without legal status became a priority for enforcement, leading to an agency that focused on arresting, among others, parents dropping their children off at school, survivors of domestic violence seeking protective orders at courts, and a 10-year-old child in an ambulance on the way to the hospital for emergency surgery. This ill-advised and cruel approach culminated in the horrific practice of separating children from their parents at the border, an action the Trump administration undertook knowing full well that it would be nearly impossible to reunite all of the families it separated. The parents of hundreds of separated children have not yet been located, with some families perhaps separated permanently.