This article from the Washington Post highlights the many "catastrophic" developmental and health effects that family separation and institutionalization has on children. The article includes several statements from professor Charles Nelson of the Harvard Medical School, one of the primary researchers on the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, who has studied the effects of institutionalization on children extensively. The article is published in light of recent U.S. policy of separating children from their parents upon entry into the country from across the border with Mexico but also references studies on the removal of Australian Aboriginal children from their families and "left-behind" children in China.
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.