This country has a very important election coming up in November, not that others haven’t or weren’t important, but this one is about a lot more than normal. One of the big topics of debate has been border control and lack thereof. Part of that though is about families being separated when they try to illegally cross over from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and or El Salvador.  This is one of the hot-button topics of Donald Trump’s last term in office.  He thought if parents were “Separated” from their kids they would think twice about trying to cross illegally again. He caved on this stance, but it wasn’t for the lack of not wanting to. He’s probably going to try to do this again if he gets into office. Let’s not have this happen again.

This documentary film produced by MSNBC Films and directed by Errol Morris is about this topic. It’s a topic we all should be concerned with because most of us are parents or sons and daughters of parents. Would we want to be Separated from our parents if they broke the law? The answer is no. Most of us have relatives who could take us though. These children that come from these third-world countries don’t have anybody that can take them so they become wards of the state. Add in the fact that they don’t speak English it’s a more difficult situation for these children. Most of whom are under the age of five. It’s bad for everybody involved.

Errol Morris has directed a lot of good documentaries over the years. He picks topics that are going to get people talking. Last year his film about the British Spy novelist John La Carre The Pigeon Tunnel came out on AppleTV+  and it was amazing. He was able to go into a lot of detail about this reclusive man’s life. With Separated he puts himself and the subjects he’s interviewing out there. Most of them were government employees who worked under the Trump Administration from 2016 to 2020.  One man in particular among a handful that spoke to him was Captain John White. This man through the handling of this situation by the ORR & ICE under the Trump administration under the bus. In fact, it was pretty awesome to see. To be honest,

As I’ve mentioned many times before Most documentaries use a pretty specific template to get their story or the subject’s story they are trying to document across. One of them is the tried and true method of talking heads. This didn’t have a lot of talking heads, but it had a good handful including Jaclyn Sualog ORR, reporter Jacob Soboroff,  Scott Loyd the Director of ORR, and Elaine Duke from the Department of Homeland Security. Some refused to be interviewed for the documentary though. The consensus by most of these people who were interviewed was that something was wrong and was being covered up by members of the Trump Administration. 

Two other parts of the documentary that were fascinating were an animatic, which Morris also used in The Pigeon Tunnel, that looked similar to a roulette wheel going around in circles. Maybe that’s his way of saying nothing is going to get accomplished here because Trump could implement these practices again and Joe Biden never did anything to prevent this from ever happening again either.  

The other thing that hammered home this topic was a reenactment by actors playing characters that literally went through what the film is talking about. One part of that was when a mother called her son because they were separated, he said to her why did you let them take me away? She didn’t have an answer for him. That was a heartbreaking moment.  It hammers home the problem this film is trying to address, quite effectively. 

The main this that this story reminded me of was that these people are trying to get away from a bad life in these countries and come here and work hard. As maids, janitors, roofers, construction workers, or lawn care & yard maintenance people. Most of these people want to work and earn a decent wage and raise their children in a country where they won’t get shot walking down the street or on their farm by corrupt police, or cartels. Who wouldn’t try and risk this in these dire circumstances?  When you have elected officials like Governor of Florida Ron DeSantis rounding up refugees and putting them on plains and sending them back to their country it doesn’t help matters. It only makes it worse.

Separated is an indictment of the kinds of things the Donald Trump Administration wanted to do. It’s just one thing, but it wasn’t good. Securing the Southern Border and building a huge wall was part of his running strategy. He failed on that. He made promises he couldn’t keep. Is reflecting on him for a second term going to change anything? I don’t think so. Morris pointed the finger at just one thing that was wrong with this man and his doctrines. The answers on this point were very well done by Morris and the talking heads as well as the reenactments he used to tell a story during the structure of the film. Every American voter needs to see this documentary. It may be a deciding factor in who they vote for this coming November. 

4 stars

Dan Skip Allen