Over the past few weeks, the Trump administration has been under fire from opponents and allies following the images and sounds of more than 2,000 young children who were separated from their parents and being kept in cages in a detention center in Texas. Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order that ends the policy of separating migrant children from their parents who are detained.

“So, we’re going to have strong—very strong borders,” Trump said. “But we’re going to keep the families together. I didn’t like the sight, or the feeling of families being separated.”

These comments come after he earlier argued that “you can’t do it by executive order.” The President is now ordering that family separation will be replaced with the detention of entire families. It’s not immediately clear what will happen to the detained children or when they will be reunited with their parents.

Since May 24, when the “zero-tolerance” policy was enforced, there have been dozens of immigrant children from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in Maryland that were separated from their families after crossing the border into America illegally. While the President’s order will stop the future separation of child and parent, local organizations are concerned about the well-being of the children already separated. The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) that works with refugees and migrants openly opposes the practice of family detention.

“While children will no longer be ripped from the arms of their parents for the sole purpose of deterring immigration, they will go to jail with their parents,” said Kay Bellor, VP for programs at LIRS, in a statement. “Jail is never an appropriate place for a child.”

For the past two years, the Catholic Charities of Maryland’s Esperanza Center has been running a family reunification program that helps minors reunite with their families. The center has helped 243 unaccompanied minors who have crossed the border—including eight who were forcibly separated from their parents—so far this year.

“We haven’t received any guidance from the [Trump] administration for how they are going to handle the children who have already been separated,” said Helany Sinkler, who runs the reunification program. “Although the children are being cared for and looked after in the shelter, there’s nothing better than reuniting a child with their family.”

Sinkler says that the reunification process is not an easy one and predicting how long it takes is tougher. Locating and approving a sponsor is a tedious process including finger printing, background checks, and myriad communication across borders given that most children arrive with nothing but a name and phone number for a relative. During that time, the child is placed in either a shelter or foster care, depending on the age, until a legal sponsor is appointed.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Physicians, and the American Psychiatric Association have all issued statements warning against the traumatic effects of separating families—representing more than 250,000 doctors in the United States.

“To pretend that separated children do not grow up with the shrapnel of this traumatic experience embedded in their minds is to disregard everything we know about child development, the brain, and trauma,” the doctors wrote in a statement to President Trump.

In addition to the reunification process, director of the Esperanza Center Val Twanmoh says that they are working with children have suffered traumatic experiences both in the home country and once crossing into the U.S. She stressed a need for increased counseling and mental health workers to assist with the transition of the children.

“Finding bilingual mental health providers is extremely difficult,” she said. “We normally have to refer them out because we don’t have the workers to accommodate it. It’s extremely difficult.”

Sinkler is still planning to do all she can for as many children as she can with the current resources she has but is still in disbelief that something so “unbelievable and incomprehensible” is happening in this country.

“When you’re talking about family separation, there’s now this added layer on top of everything they’ve already suffered in home country,” she said. “We are essentially re-traumatizing the children that came seeking protection and fleeing already horrible conditions. It’s unreal that this is America that is doing this. This isn’t another country that’s notorious for not being sympathetic. This is not what we do.”

Mayor Catherine Pugh announced last week that the City of Baltimore would increase its support to provide legal representation to immigrants facing deportation. This effort is just one part of the Safe City Baltimore Fund launched in April with Open Society Institute (OSI) Baltimore to protect the city as a whole. 

“Providing legal representation to those facing deportation maintains trust in law enforcement and our local institutions and keeps us all safe,” Mayor Pugh said in a statement. “If our residents don’t feel safe, all of us are at more risk.”

Baltimore is now one of 11 locations around the country that are a part of the SAFE (Safety and Fairness for Everyone) Cities Network, a group that is funded by the Vera Institute of Justice and devoted to protecting immigrants. Prince George’s County was the only other Maryland jurisdiction chosen for the initiative.

Under the program, the city is required to invest public dollars that are then matched by the SAFE Cities Network to provide legal counsel to detained Baltimore City residents facing deportation. Catalina Rodriguez-Lima, director of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant and Multicultural Affairs (MIMA), said the city plans to invest $100,000 that will be supplemented by the catalyst fund from the Vera Institute, which combined will be enough to help 40 residents attain legal assistance.

“The great thing about partnering with Vera is that they will be providing technical assistance to our offices,” Rodriguez-Lima said. “Also, as part of the project, they’ll be collecting data on the cases—everything from the impact on the families to the impact of the city’s economy.”

The catalyst fund from the Vera Institute will be dedicated solely to residents who have been detained. But now, under the Safe City Baltimore initiative with OSI, there is additional funding to help those individuals seeking an attorney who have not yet been arrested. Tracy Brown of OSI Baltimore said that more than $500,000 was raised to address the growing need for training and coordination of pro bono attorneys, as well as education on basic rights.

“The risks of deportation are so huge,” Brown said. “When you think about how difficult it is for an immigrant to assert legal rights in that kind of high stakes position without an attorney, it’s really an insurmountable burden.”

On Wednesday, Rodriguez-Lima announced that four nonprofit organizations in Maryland would receive funding from the combined fund: the Catholic Charities Esperanza Center, the Pro Bono Resource Center of Maryland, the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, and the Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights (CAIR) Coalition, which will handle the defense for detained residents facing deportation.

“They all have a separate service that we believe combined can really have an impact in the City of Baltimore,” Rodriguez-Lima said. “So having the multi-prong approach, that can target populations at various levels in the immigration process, we can help approximately 900 people.” 

All services will be free to Baltimore City residents who meet the income requirements. Rodriguez-Lima says the typical deportation defense is challenging and requires a lot of money and effort to yield positive results. She believes that MIMA’s partnership with OSI Baltimore and the Vera Institute is a step in the right direction. 

“It’s really about basic fairness—it’s a due process issue,” she said. “I think as a city, that’s the minimum we can do. By doing that, we can protect children and keep families together.”