Separated

Inside an American Tragedy

By: Jacob Soboroff

Narrated by: Jacob Soboroff

Length: 10 hrs and 39 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the award-winning NBC News and MSNBC correspondent comes a powerful and deeply reported journey to lay bare the full truth behind the defining moral crisis of the Trump years: the systematic separation of thousands of desperate migrant families at the US-Mexico border.

In June 2018, Donald Trump’s most notorious decision as president had secretly been in effect for months before most Americans became aware of the astonishing inhumanity being perpetrated by their own government. Jacob Soboroff was among the first journalists to expose this reality after seeing firsthand the living conditions of the children in custody. His influential series of reports ignited public scrutiny that contributed to the president reversing his own policy and earned Soboroff the Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Broadcast Journalism and, with his colleagues, the 2019 Hillman Prize for Broadcast Journalism. 

But beyond the headlines, the complete, multilayered story lay untold. How, exactly, had such a humanitarian tragedy - now deemed “torture” by physicians - happened on American soil? Most important, what has been the human experience of those separated children and parents? 

Soboroff has spent the past two years reporting the many strands of this complex narrative, developing sources from within the Trump administration who share critical details for the first time. He also traces the dramatic odyssey of one separated family from Guatemala, where their lives were threatened by narcos, to seek asylum at the US border, where they were separated - the son ending up in Texas, and the father thousands of miles away, in the Mojave desert of Central California. And he joins the heroes who emerged to challenge the policy and who worked on the ground to reunite parents with children.

In this essential reckoning, Soboroff weaves together these key voices with his own experience covering this national issue - at the border in Texas, California, and Arizona; with administration officials in Washington, DC, and inside the disturbing detention facilities. 

Separated lays out compassionately, yet in the starkest of terms, its human toll and makes clear what is at stake in the 2020 presidential election. 

©2020 Jacob Soboroff (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

A must read for thoughtful, caring people who want the ugly truth.

Often a good book is ruined when the writer is also the narrator. That is not the case with this book. Soboroff meticulously reports the great tragedy of the treatment of immigrants and children who become just one more pawn of the sociopathic president, Donald Trumph , and his blind followers who carry out his cruel and short sighted policies. Important reading for all Americans.

Important Work -- Must Read

Separated is an important work as it chronicles one of the worst human tragedies imposed by the US government in modern history. It will make you cry. It will make you angry. You will feel retraumatised and ashamed. You will be led through a labyrinth of incompetence, abuse and cruelty that is/was the Trump administration's family separation policy. Jacob Soberoff presents a basically chronological recounting of the way this policy was enacted and played out in the lives of countless immigrant families. He names many of the villains and behind the scenes heroes involved in the reality of Trump's policy. He takes a deep dive into the complicated, if shameful history of the way the US government has tried and failed to deal with it's broken immigration system before and during the Trump administration. The format or style in which the story is presented poses some problems. I found it hard to follow the details. To a large extent, Soboroff quotes from his notes or his TV reporting using a lot of numbers and dates. This makes the audible format less than ideal -- the numbers become kind of a blur, and the notes are disjointed. It would probably be much easier to follow in written text form. There would be visual clues from formatting and punctuation that would help. Thus, the 3 star rating for story. Evenso, the story is of such high value historically and morally, I still recommend you read/listen to it however you can get hold of it.

You owe it to your country to listen

The truth is that this is a difficult story to hear. That is because it is the story of how the Trump administration tortured parents and their children by separating, caging and then incarcerating them in separate states solely to deter humans from other countries from seeking asylum. They even separated children under 5 years of age from their parents- who did not know if they would ever see their child again.

Mixed in with the monsters promoting this policy were a few heroes who fought to prevent it or at least mitigate the damage, including the attorney’s and the judge who forced the reunification.

The author did a great job detailing each step, or misstep, and bringing it all alive by following a father and son who went to hell and back.

It is a story that had to be told but it will not matter if there is no one interested enough to listen. It is a maddening but ultimately rewarding.

Well paced, well written, well read.

Buy the print version

Sorry, not sorry, but you’ve heard the old saying “they have a face for radio”, well... he has a voice for the written word. I’m 6 chapters in, and this book is painful to listen to. It’s flat, monotone, nearly affectless delivery made me wish that the author would have read it just to add SOME level of interest to the delivery. Imagine my surprise to realize the author IS the narrator. Sorry, Mr. Soboroff.

The story, when I can glean part of it, is interesting and well researched, and I really do appreciate the effort to collect and provide the back story in a chronological, meaningful way; I want to know the information within, but...

I’ve often bought the Audible version when I haven’t had the time to read a book, but this will be the first time I’ve done the reverse; I’ll be buying the print version just to be able to comprehend what the author is trying to tell us.

While I usually really enjoy listening to the story in the author’s own voice, this is an exception. Buy the print version.

Heartbreaking—The Nightmare Nightmare—Crimes Against Humanity

Chasing the American Dream leads to an American Nightmare. Jacob Soboroff’s heartrending take of how Juan, José, and thousands of innocent asylum seekers have been treated: political pawns is a living nightmare. The one question we have yet to discover the answer to is perhaps the most disconcerting—where are the little children and where are the girls from infant through 17? This book will raise questions and bring tears. As a US Army veteran and a LIfe Member of the Disabled American Veterans (DAV), I found myself asking the same question time-and-time-again: “What happened to the democracy I served, and how has the American Dream turned into a living nightmare for 10s of 1000s of innocents? Jacob Soboroff turns a spotlight on the Trump Administration’s American Nightmare—crimes against children and crimes against humanity. This cannot stand. It must not stand!

Donald Trump Tortured Over 5,500 Children

Donald Trump should not be reelected President of the United States. He instituted a policy that tortured over 5,500 children, many of them babies in diapers. 7 of them died. The torture conclusion was the determination of the Nobel Peace Prize winning not-for-profit Physicians for Human Rights. Other organizations including the American Psychological Association, the America Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Physicians have concluded that the policy caused irreparable harm, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), cruel and inhuman treatment and child abuse. Donald Trump today regrets ending the program. Jacob Soboroff’s excellent book is based on his reporting and incredible data collection for the past several years. He proves that Donald Trump has lied about the program being started by Barack Obama, that the program did not even exist as America’s lawyers lied in court, that it effectively deterred immigration and that there was an effective way to reunite children. In the book we learn that the “zero tolerance” policy of the Trump administration falsely criminalized people who crossed the border seeking asylum from death or serious harm to them and their children. As a result, they were criminally charged and their children were taken away for many months, many with no contact even by phone. The children were called “unaccompanied” which made reuniting the families infinitely difficult. People were directed not even to pick up and hold babies in diapers who were kept form their parents. When Donald Trump eventually reluctantly ended the program, it was discovered that there were no accurate records of where the children were taken and how to reunite them with the parents. Absent the remarkable work of the ACLU and many immigrant associations, the program would still exist. The Trump administration started a policy of lying to the parents about ever seeing their children and they had to abandon the children for any hope that the child could stay in the United States. As a result, several children today cannot be with their parents as they have been deported. Mr. Soboroff puts the facts together in a remarkable story that should never be forgotten or duplicated. As Donald Trump said months after he ended the family separation policy, he regrets having done so. There is only one way to guarantee the prevention of future child torture by the United States of America, and that will be decided in November of 2020.

Better all the way around then I expected

Very impressive presentation of this story that I remember following nightly on MSNBC. Di d not drag and conveyed a focus on how intentionally cruel this policy was. Fits president Trump to a “T”. Hopefully in January 2021 a new Democratically controlled congress will begin a measure investigative process to present this story for the public record.

Unbelievable

A must read for a better understanding of what Trump and his administration have done, and continue to do against family's.

Captivating!

I was hooked on this book. Finished it in 2 days while doing chores around the house. Listened every moment I was not talking to someone else. It is presented in documentary style but I like things like that..

Transparency so needed

Soboroff stumbles into a story begging for transparency and to be told to the American people. Swamped by the administration’s continuous propaganda and misinformation to drive their Agenda, Soboroff cuts through the fog of tactlessness so notable with today’s administration. This is not a clinical dissection of policy, rather a balance examination of humanity gone awry and the Policy that pushed actions of many beyond the line true of the nation’s values. This is a deeply troubling account of the nation at its worse. For the many of the USA that have been victimized by racism this story likely comes at no surprise.

Ultimately, the is the media / press doing what was envisioned by the nation’s founders - revealing the underbelly of activity, actions and corruption that threatens the ideals of the nation.

As stated by some close to these events, this marches goose stepped close to the horrors of the Nazis in the 1930-40s.

Wake up USA. Vote and return this Nation to a course that is in keeping with What’s good in America.