Family separation is the condition where family members are involuntarily separated from each other, often because of immigration systems, although it can happen for other reasons such as military service or involuntary adoption. Family separation can have a serious impact on mental health. Because family separation interferes with the right to family life, family reunification is a reason for immigration in many countries.
The relationship between immigration and crime has been a subject of extensive research, political discourse, and public debate.
Immigrants are disproportionately represented in prison populations in many Western countries, though notable exceptions exist, such as the United States. In Europe and other regions, higher representation in prisons among immigrants, particularly Muslim populations, has been documented. However, some of the factors contributing to these trends include imprisonment for migration-related offenses and systemic bias in policing and judicial processes, which may inflate crime statistics for immigrant populations relative to their real criminal rate. Research suggests that public perception often exaggerates the connection between immigration and crime, influenced by sensationalised media coverage and political rhetoric. This can result in stricter immigration controls, as well as harsher immigration policies like family separation; along with a potential increase in hate crimes against immigrant communities.
Since 2014, the government of the People's Republic of China has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslim minorities in Xinjiang which has often been characterized as persecution or as genocide. There have been reports of mass arbitrary arrests and detention, torture, mass surveillance, cultural and religious persecution, family separation, forced labor, sexual violence, and violations of reproductive rights.
In 2014, the administration of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) general secretary Xi Jinping launched the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism, which involved surveillance and restrictions in Xinjiang. Beginning in 2017, under Xinjiang Party secretary Chen Quanguo, the government incarcerated over an estimated one million Uyghurs without legal process in internment camps officially described as "vocational education and training centers", in the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority group since World War II. China began to wind down the camps in 2019, and Amnesty International states that detainees have been increasingly transferred to the penal system.