Social Justice Award Winner ‘Separated’ Puts Spotlight on Immigration Policies

The Fund for Santa Barbara and SBIFF Showcase Documentary on Separation of Families

Credit: Courtesy 'Separated', MSNBC Films

Mon Feb 03, 2025 | 03:50pm

This year’s Social Justice Award at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF), selected and sponsored by the Fund for Santa Barbara, brings a timely example of investigative journalism with Academy Award–winning director Errol Morris’s Separated, a film that uncovers the immigration policies that led to the separation of thousands of families during the first Trump administration.

The film, based on journalist Jacob Soboroff’s 2020 book Separated: Inside an American Tragedy, melds vignettes of one family’s plight with interviews of government officials who describe how immigration programs were used as a tool to separate families at the border. The film was selected by a review board from the Fund for SB, an organization that had a large part in creating the Immigrant Legal Defense Center in 2016.

Fund for S.B. Executive Director Eder Gaona-Macedo said this year’s award winner is also timely and relevant to what is currently happening in the country, as President Trump’s second administration announced a flurry of executive orders that have already brought a wave of immigration enforcement across the country, and here in Santa Barbara County.

“Families are still being separated,” he said, “but it’s no longer happening at the border — this is happening in our own backyards.”

Recent reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents making arrests on the Central Coast have sparked fear in Latino communities, said Gaona-Macedo, who himself crossed the border undocumented as a child before going on to forge a career in nonprofits. In 2017, he helped found the 805 UndocuFund, which raised more than $6 million toward undocumented families in the following years during the pandemic. He says he hopes the film screening and award will “galvanize the region” to continue to support families impacted by immigration policy.

“We believe that movies can create movements, and Separated is such an urgent example,” Gaona-Macedo said. “The administration’s recent actions have traumatized our immigrant neighbors, inflicting fear and uncertainty. Immigrants are the backbone of our economy — now more than ever, we must stand up to protect their rights.”

Gaona-Macedo says there are two major ways to provide assistance during these times: supporting organizations on the ground with donations — only one percent of philanthropic funds goes to immigrant protection, he says — and helping to dispel narratives that simply paint migrants as criminals.

“For the longest time, immigrants have been dehumanized,” Gaona-Macedo said. “At the end of the day, these are our neighbors; these are our friends; these are our colleagues. They bring so much richness to the community, and that’s the humanity we need going on right now.”

“There’s a lot of noise right now, and the truth needs to come out,” he continued. “The truth is so much more powerful, and once we look at each other as humans, as people, we really start to take away this narrative.”

Separated will be playing three times this week: Wednesday, February 5, at 6 p.m. at SBIFF Film Center; Friday, February 7, at noon at Riviera Theatre; and Sunday, February 9, at 6 p.m. at SBIFF Film Center.

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