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family separation
When ICE Detains a Father, a Child Pays the Price
As Father's Day approaches, many children are already missing fathers they were unfairly separated from, not because those fathers failed their children, but because of a failed immigration system that is increasingly willing to separate families.
Jun 19, 2026
When I was little, I’d wake up when I heard my dad getting ready for work. I’d run downstairs hoping to catch him before he left so I could hug him goodbye. My father, an immigrant from India, came to the United States as a child with my grandparents in search of stability and opportunity. They worked hard to build a life here, and I grew up watching my dad do the same—out the door early, home late.
Sometimes I cried if I missed him before he left. Sometimes I cried even after a hug, because the day felt so long without him. But there was one thing I never questioned: He would come home.
Too many children in immigrant families don’t have that certainty today. In recent months, high-profile cases have shown how quickly stability can disappear, as families are swept into immigration enforcement and children are separated from their parents, often with little warning. New research from the Brookings Institution estimates that more than 100,000 children have been separated from a parent during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, and that most of those children are likely US citizens. Researchers also warn the true scale may be even higher because the government does not consistently track whether detained immigrants are parents.
A father can leave for a shift and not come back, not because he chose to abandon his family, but because immigration agents arrested him on his way to work, during a scheduled court check-in, or even in everyday places like airports. In recent weeks, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have been deployed in airports across the country, where travelers have witnessed arrests unfold in real time. We are already seeing the consequences in deeply troubling ways, including the case of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos in Minnesota, whose detention alongside his father drew national attention.
For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it.
When parents are detained, children are often pulled into the system with them, or families are left scrambling to stay together. Recent court filings describe hundreds of children held in family detention facilities beyond court-ordered limits, often without adequate food, medical care, or mental health support. Many other children are left with relatives, neighbors, older siblings, or informal caregivers while parents remain in detention or face deportation proceedings, forcing children to navigate sudden loss and uncertainty.
According to federal data compiled by TRAC, more than 60,000 people are currently held in ICE detention, and nearly three-quarters have no criminal conviction. The Trump administration claims that ICE targets “the worst of the worst,” but the data tell a different story. Because immigration arrests disproportionately target working-age men, many detained are likely fathers. That gap matters deeply in a country where more than 4 million US citizen children live with an undocumented parent. That omission makes it easier to debate immigration enforcement policy while overlooking the children who are directly impacted. Even if only a fraction of those detained are parents, that still means thousands of children losing a caregiver, a provider, or both, frequently overnight. They are neighbors and community members, often fathers who were actively raising their children until the day the government took them away. I know this not only from policy data, but from listening to fathers talk about their children.
As a senior policy researcher at Children’s Rights, I study how family stability shapes a child’s well-being and how quickly it can be shattered by the government. We have found that current immigration policies are not only separating families but causing measurable harm to children, including mental health challenges, developmental delays, and disruptions to their education. Federal data show children being held in immigration custody for months at a time, often averaging more than 150 days, exposing them to prolonged instability and stress.
In a qualitative study published in the Journal of Child and Family Studies, my co-authors and I interviewed 85 Latino fathers raising young children in the United States. Many were immigrants, primarily from Mexico, El Salvador, and Guatemala. They spoke about love and connection, wanting to be present, witness milestones, and serve as role models. They reflected on their own parents and their hopes for their children. They described the burdens of responsibility, but also of joy. They sounded like parents everywhere, underscoring how universal these parenting motivations are.
That is why detaining fathers is not just harsh, it is shortsighted. Decades of research show fathers play a unique role in children’s emotional well-being, behavior, and learning. When the government removes a father without warning, holds him for weeks or months, and ultimately deports him, children do not experience it as “policy.” They experience it as a profound loss.
As Father’s Day approaches, I am thinking about the fathers who show up for their children every day, who work long hours, provide stability, and try to build better futures for their families. Across the country, many children are already missing fathers they were unfairly separated from. Not because those fathers failed their children, but because of a failed immigration system that is increasingly willing to separate families.
For years, politicians have lamented a “fatherlessness crisis.” We should name what we are doing when we detain and deport fathers without regard for their children. We are actively manufacturing it. If we truly care about children’s health and well-being, we must treat family integrity and stability as essential.
Congress and the administration should require ICE to collect and publicly report whether those it detains are parents of minor children, and ensure children are not left without safe caregiving arrangements. This is especially urgent given recent reporting that ICE is failing to follow its own policies designed to protect family unity, including requirements that agents ask whether someone has children and allow parents to make decisions about their care. ICE should use detention more sparingly for parents and expand community-based alternatives that allow people to keep working and caring for their children while their cases proceed.
I still picture my younger self at the top of the stairs, running toward my father’s morning hug. Every child deserves to believe, with confidence, that a parent who leaves in the morning will come home at night.
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What Progressives Want for Mother's Day: Affordability and Family Reunification
"To really honor Mother's Day, we must fight for our government to pass policies that actually help mothers and families," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said.
May 10, 2026
Progressive leaders and organizations celebrated US Mother's Day on Sunday with calls for policy changes that would make life easier for families.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) pointed out that issues of affordability make mothering—and celebrating mothers—more difficult.
"Despite the average family paying 20% of their income on childcare in 2025, [President Donald] Trump has said, 'It's not possible for us to take care of daycare,'" Warren posted on social media, referring to remarks the president made last month in which he claimed that the federal government could not afford to fund childcare, Medicare, and Medicaid because it needed the money for warfare.
"To really honor Mother's Day, we must fight for our government to pass policies that actually help mothers and families," Warren continued.
"If this country truly valued mothers, our politics would reflect it."
In a separate post, the Massachusetts senator listed several items, from cakes to coffee to flowers, that had gone up in price during the second Trump administration.
"Here's everything that's more expensive this Mother's Day under Donald Trump," she wrote.
Here's everything that's more expensive this Mother's Day under Donald Trump:
Fresh cakes and cupcakes: up 5.2%
Fresh sweetrolls, coffeecakes, doughnuts: up 3.6%
Bananas: up 5%
Citrus fruits: up 2.7%
Coffee: up 18.7%
Candy and chewing gum: up 10.6%
Indoor plants and flowers: up…
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 10, 2026
Progressive political action group Our Revolution also called for a more robust social safety net for Mother's Day.
"If this country truly valued mothers, our politics would reflect it," the group wrote. "Universal childcare. Medicare for All. Paid family leave. A living wage. Affordable housing. Strong public schools. A four-day work week. Reproductive freedom."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) who founded Our Revolution, wished a happy Mother's Day to his wife Jane and all other mothers, calling for both national and global stability.
"Let us continue our push for a world where all mothers can raise their families without the threat of war, with economic stability, and where their rights are protected," he wrote.
Other lawmakers focused on mothers who are separated from their children due to immigration detention under the second Trump administration, which resumed the practice of family detention after it had largely been abandoned under President Joe Biden.
Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) spent Saturday preparing donations for Immigration and Custom Enforcement's (ICE) Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Decatur Township, Pennsylvania.
"This Mother’s Day I’m thinking of the moms and mother figures unjustly detained at Moshannon who would rather be at home with their babies," she wrote on social media.
This Mother’s Day I’m thinking of the moms and mother figures unjustly detained at Moshannon who would rather be at home with their babies.
Yesterday we packed and sent off buses with donations for them. It’s the least we can do. pic.twitter.com/EocSX6kzrY
— Rep. Summer Lee (@RepSummerLee) May 10, 2026
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) encouraged followers to donate to Each Step Home, which works to reunite immigrant families and support and release children in immigration detention.
"This Mother's Day, I'm thinking of Trump & ICE's cruel treatment of mothers & traumatization of children. No mother, no child, & no family should be detained—but that's exactly what's happening in Dilley, TX," she wrote, referring to a family detention center reopened by the second Trump administration and run by private prison company CoreCivic.
This Mother's Day, I'm thinking of Trump & ICE's cruel treatment of mothers & traumatization of children.
No mother, no child, & no family should be detained—but that's exactly what's happening in Dilley, TX. pic.twitter.com/NeyB4gVIJo
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) May 10, 2026
Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-Ill.), meanwhile, shared the story of Isidoro González Avilés and Norma Anabel Ramírez Amaya, who were released from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) detention on Friday and reunited Saturday with their son Kevin González, who has terminal cancer.
Kevin, who was born in the US and raised in Mexico, was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer during a visit to the US, as CNN reported. His parents attempted to travel to the US to visit him before he died, despite having previous immigration infractions, and were detained. The family was finally able to reunite in Durango, Mexico.
Isidoro González Avilés y Norma Anabel se reunieron este sábado con su hijo Kevin en Durango, México, luego de ser liberados por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional el viernes.
Kevin, quien nació en Estados Unidos, pero se crió en México, tiene cáncer de colon en etapa cuatro… pic.twitter.com/K341mAlOFU
— N+ UNIVISION (@nmasunivision) May 10, 2026
"My heart is full seeing the images of Kevin and his family reunited," Ramirez wrote. "Our community made this moment possible. As we celebrate Mother's Day, let’s remember all the mothers still separated from their loved ones by DHS. For all the families that have not been reunited yet, we continue the fight."
In a separate post, she added, "To all those who are grieving loss, family separation, and the impacts of genocide and war this Mother's Day, we see you. You are not alone."
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DC Police Collaboration With Occupying Feds Perpetuates Family Separation
Increased criminalization and deportations exacerbate family separation by creating the conditions used to justify state intervention and forcible removal.
Nov 22, 2025
Washington, DC is already the most policed city in the US, through resourcing policing more than any other major US city to the dozens of local and federal law enforcement agencies that residents encounter in our daily lives. These conditions and increased criminalization contribute to the stopping, arrests, sentencing, incarceration, and deportation of disproportionately Black and brown youth and adults. These circumstances contribute to forcible family separation. As a former foster youth I’ve seen how this exacerbates harms rather than pathways to safety for too many families.
Since August, additional presence of federal law enforcement and the National Guard have blanketed the city. Though Mayor Muriel Bowser claims that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) is not cooperating with immigration enforcement, numerous local accounts show MPD and federal agencies working alongside each other on. Local legal service and mutual aid organizations have declared MPD’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) a violation of the Sanctuary Values Amendment Act (which DC Council Chair Phil Mendelson revealed Mayor Bowser secretly tried to repeal), calling the decision by DC Police Chief Pamela Smith a “betrayal of the city’s residents.”
The current conditions that DC residents are living under have rippling effects that will be felt long after the current occupation, including exacerbating family separation through deportation, incarceration of youth and adults, and forced removal under the guise of care.
Like the presence of federal agencies, Child Protective Services (CPS) are framed as protectors. But what DC families have felt is not protected, but increasingly unsafe conditions. What DC families have experienced is not security or sanctuary, but the very real consequences from a manufactured crisis that justifies the conditions for family separation in the state’s eye.
As DC residents, we must ask: What does true family safety look like for us?
Since the “surge” of the presence of federal agencies, community documentation and data project Courtwatch DC has reported a sharp increase in people detained who appear during arraignment court proceedings, which have gone as late as 1:00 am the following day. When a parent or guardian is arrested or incarcerated, even if for only one night, CPS often intervenes by displacing their children into the foster system, a pipeline that predominantly impacts youth of color. The increased criminalization of DC residents puts families at risk of separation due to parental incarceration.
ICE agencies are employing historic tactics of family separation as CPS continues a legacy of using immigration policies to separate families. When parents or guardians are detained and disappeared by ICE, children may be left with no caregivers and become vulnerable to CPS intervention. The justification of forcible removal of children while parents are indefinitely detained is a state-created problem, unnecessarily perpetuating family separation.
Residents have additionally reported that parents of immigrant students are afraid to send their children to school for fear of kidnapping by ICE. Making the choice to keep immigrant children away from school may be a double-edged sword, where the absence that is meant to protect them may be met by punitive attendance policies, putting both students and their parents at risk of intervention from CPS and law enforcement.
With or without youth programs, young people should be able to exist safely outside, in public, in their own city. Punitive tactics that directly target DC youth exacerbate the impacts of local law enforcement cooperation with federal agencies. Criminalizing existing as a young person in public, Mayor Bowser has continued to implement and threaten to implement youth curfew zones which target areas Black youth choose to spend time together in public.
When youth are criminalized and subsequently arrested, this may be considered a form of child endangerment or neglect—a justification for forcible removal of children from family care. While the city’s Black and brown youth are funneled into foster, jail, and prison pipelines, their Black and brown parents are blamed for the removal of their own children, justifying the expansion of state intervention and family separation.
One’s home, from the living room, neighborhood, to the city, should feel safe—like a sanctuary. When families are separated, missingness is a constant reminder that we live in unsafe conditions. As DC residents, we must ask: What does true family safety look like for us? Residents have been clear that they recognize that the federal “surge” is not about crime or safety, but about control, extraction, and repression of the most vulnerable. As DC residents, we must make this demand: If DC’s lawmakers care about the security and wellness of families, they must end the cooperation of MPD with federal agencies.
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New York Times Reveals 'More Targeted Version' of Trump Family Separation Policy
"The family separation policies of the first Trump administration were disastrous, and their resurgence cannot be tolerated," said one critic.
Aug 05, 2025
U.S. immigration authorities are once again separating children from their undocumented parents in "what appears to be a more targeted version of one of the most explosive policies" of President Donald Trump's first term, The New York Times revealed on Tuesday.
The Times "uncovered at least nine cases in which parents have been separated from their children after they refused to comply with deportation orders, according to internal government documents, case files, and interviews," wrote exposé author Hamed Aleaziz.
The practice is not as widespread as it was under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy, when the ACLU estimated that approximately 5,500 children—including some with physical and mental disabilities—were torn from their families.
"But the new cases suggest that the administration has decided to use family separation as a tool, at least in some instances, to persuade families to leave and to create a powerful deterrent for those who might come to the United States illegally," Aleaziz wrote.
The cruelty is the point. None of these #children will ever recover www.nytimes.com/2025/08/05/u... #immigration #refugees
[image or embed]
— Regina Rae Weiss (@reginagroks.bsky.social) August 5, 2025 at 6:58 AM
Aleaziz highlighted the case of Evgeny and Evgeniia, who fled Russia with their 8-year-old son Maksim to seek political asylum in the United States.
Evgeniia said via an interpreter while in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody that her family traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border seeking an appointment through a Biden-era program that allowed people to enter the United States at a port of entry if they registered using the glitch-plagued CBP One app.
However, Trump canceled that program on his first day of office, and the couple decided to present at a port of entry and request asylum. They were immediately detained. Then they were given a choice: leave the United States and return to Russia as a family, or remain in ICE custody while they pursued their asylum claim, but Maksim would be taken from them and placed in a shelter.
Fearing for their future in Russia, Evegeny and Evgeniia chose separation.
"A few days, right?" Maksim begged as he was taken away. "A few days?"
Evgeny replied, "Yes, yes, it will be just a few days."
That was on May 15.
Authorities later determined that risks faced by Evgeny and Evgeniia in Russia precluded their deportation. However, they remain in ICE detention—and Maksim in a foster home—pending the outcome of their asylum case.
"It's terrible, that's what I can say," Evgeniia told Aleaziz. "I wouldn't wish it even to an enemy. It's a constant grief and longing."
Responding to Aleaziz's article, Sarah Pierce, director of policy at the centrist think tank Third Way, wrote on the social media site Bluesky that "this administration is picking right back up where it left off with family separation—giving parents a 'binary choice' between imminent danger or surrendering their children."
The New York Immigration Coalition asserted on X that "the family separation policies of the first Trump administration were disastrous, and their resurgence cannot be tolerated."
U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the Times that ICE "does not separate families," despite copious evidence to the contrary—including testimonials in Aleaziz's article and elsewhere.
"The parents had the right and the ability to depart the country as a family and willfully choose to not comply," McLaughlin said of Evgeny and Evgeniia.
However, there have been many cases in which no such choice was offered. Last week, Adam Isacson of the Washington Office on Latin America and Diana Flórez of the Women's Refugee Commission said that "the extent of involuntary family separation is far greater than we expected," including "hundreds" of U.S. citizen children who have been separated from undocumented parents after their arrest.
In their recent analysis, Isacson and Flórez pointed to the new ICE's new Detained Parents Directive that they said "substantially weakens ICE's obligation to help parents facilitate reunification with their children before removal, which raises grave concerns that these involuntary separations are going to increase."
According to Isacson and Flórez:
In some cases, parents report to service providers that they are being removed without even getting a chance to communicate with their families at all. "They want to punish them for entering the United States, and they do it by targeting what they love the most—separating them from their families. It's not a coincidence; it's something that's been well-planned," said a social worker who works with deported families.
"It's a lie that they're giving them the choice to bring kids back with them," one social worker told the authors. "Every day, women arrive crying, but what can we do? I don't know how to help."
While several previous administrations used family separation for a variety of reasons including child endangerment, public safety, and national security, Claire Trickler-McNulty, a former ICE official who has served in Republican and Democratic administrations, told the Times, "I'm not aware of ICE previously using family separation as a consequence for failure to comply."
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said his organization is once again investigating the legality of Trump's policy.
"That the Trump administration has found a new form of family separation is hardly surprising given they have yet to acknowledge the horrific harm caused by the original policy and are now blatantly breaching provisions of the settlement designed to provide relief to those abused families, many of whom to this day still remain separated," Gelernt told the Times.
Despite the creation of a Family Reunification Task Force during the Biden administration, a December 2024 report published by Human Rights Watch, the Texas Civil Rights Project, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School found that as many as 1,360 separated children had still not been reunited with their families.
On his first day in office, Trump canceled the task force. Tom Homan, Trump's "border czar" who oversaw family separation during the president's first term, has followed through on his vow to resume family separation.
Homan also said the Trump administration would "need to construct family facilities"—a euphemism for what critics call concentration camps, which have been used to imprison and even kill off officially undesired populations throughout U.S. history.
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'Calculated Cruelty': Report Details Lasting Harms of Trump Family Separation Policy
Up to 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the Trump administration have not been reunited six years later, according to the new report from a trio of human rights groups.
Dec 16, 2024
A report published Monday by a coalition of human rights groups estimates that as many as 1,360 children who were separated from their parents under the first Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy have yet to be reunited, causing immense suffering for families ensnared in the punitive effort to deter border crossings.
The 135-page report was produced by Human Rights Watch (HRW), the Texas Civil Rights Project (TCRP), and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School, and it comes as immigrant rights advocates brace for President-elect Donald Trump's return to power alongside officials who helped develop and implement the large-scale family separations.
"Forcible separation of children from their families inflicted harms that were severe and foreseeable," states the report, which examines public and internal government documents, materials from legal proceedings, and the findings of government investigations and features interviews with parents and children who were forcibly separated by the Trump administration.
"Once parents realized they would not be immediately reunited with their children, they were distraught," the report continues. "Some children sobbed uncontrollably. Many felt abandoned. Nearly all were bewildered, not least because immigration officials would not tell them where their parents were or gave responses that proved to be lies."
The groups estimate that the first Trump administration separated more than 4,600 children from their families during its four years in power, and nearly 30% of the children are unaccounted for and "may remain separated from their parents."
"A government should never target children to send a message to parents."
While family separations predated Trump's first term and have continued under President Joe Biden, experts argue the Trump administration's policy was uniquely expansive and cruel. The groups behind the new report said the Trump administration's family separation efforts "constituted enforced disappearance and may have constituted torture."
"We need to take away children," Jeff Sessions, then Trump's attorney general, reportedly said during a May 2018 call with five federal prosecutors, the report observes, citing handwritten notes from one of the prosecutors.
Michael Garcia Bochenek, senior children's rights counsel at HRW and an author of the new report, said in a statement Monday that "it's chilling to see, in document after document, the calculated cruelty that went into the forcible family separation policy."
"A government should never target children to send a message to parents," Bochenek added.
The separations traumatized both parents and children, according to the report.
"Migrant children who have been forcibly separated from their parents demonstrate greater emotional and behavioral difficulties than children who have never been separated," the report notes. "Parents repeatedly told Al Otro Lado, a legal services organization based in Tijuana, that forced separation from their children was 'the worst thing they had ever experienced' and reported 'continued disturbances in sleep, nightmares, loss of appetite, loss of interest, fear for the future, constant worry, hopelessness, and loss of the ability to concentrate.'"
"In May 2018," the report adds, "a man killed himself after [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] agents forcibly separated him from his children."
HRW, TCRP, and the Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic called on Congress and the Biden administration to "put in place comprehensive measures to remedy the wrongs these families suffered" and urged the U.S. Department of Homeland Security—soon to be led by far-right South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem—to "adopt standards that presumptively keep families together, separating them only when in a child's best interest."
Trump campaigned during the 2024 election on a pledge to launch the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history," and he said during an interview aired last week that "we don't have to separate families."
"We'll send the whole family, very humanely, back to the country where they came," Trump said, suggesting he'll also deport children who are U.S. citizens.
When pressed on whether he intends to revive the "zero tolerance" policy, Trump said, "We need deterrence."
"When somebody comes here illegally, they're going out. It's very simple," he added. "Now if they come here illegally but their family is here legally, then the family has a choice. The person that came in illegally can go out, or they can all go out together."
The ACLU, which has represented separated families in court, has pledged to take swift legal action if the incoming Trump administration brings back "zero tolerance."
"I am hopeful that the Trump administration recognized the outpouring from the American public and the worldwide revulsion to ripping little children away from their parents and will not try to separate families again," ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt told TIME magazine last month. "But if it does we will be back in court immediately."
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Trump Spokesperson Affirms Day 1 Plans for Nation's 'Largest Mass Deportation Operation'
"As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation," one rights advocate said.
Nov 07, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is set to begin his promised mass deportation of undocumented immigrants as soon as he takes office on January 20, 2025, even as rights groups are mobilizing to stop him.
Trump national press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News Wednesday morning that "the American people delivered a resounding victory for President Trump."
"It gives him a mandate to govern as he campaigned, to deliver on the promises that he made, which include, on Day 1, launching the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants that Kamala Harris has allowed into this country," Leavitt said.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court."
Trump has pledged to conduct the largest deportation in U.S. history, with running mate and now Vice President-elect JD Vance promising 1 million deportations each year. The plan would likely rely on mobilizing federal agencies, the military, diplomats, and Republican-led states while using federal funds to pressure uncooperative states and cities into complying.
The stocks of private prison companies like GEOGroup and Core Civic rose significantly after Trump's win, and private contractors had already been discussing ahead of the election how to build enough detention space to accommodate Trump's plans.
A study released by the American Immigration Council in October found that a massive, one-time deportation program of the estimated 13.3 million migrants in the country without legal status would cost the government at least $315 billion while a 1-million-a-year approach would cost $88 billion a year for a total of $967.9 billion. It would also shrink the nation's gross domestic product by between 4.2 and 6.8%, not to mention the massive human cost to immigrant families, as around 5.1 million children who are U.S. citizens live with an undocumented family member.
The council also warned that such a program would likely threaten the well-being of all immigrants and increase vigilantism and hate crimes.
"As bad as the first Trump administration was for immigrants, we anticipate it will be much worse this time and are particularly concerned about the use of the military to round up immigrants," Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who fought the first Trump administration on family separation and other policies, told The Washington Post. "As always, we will go to court to challenge illegal policies, but it is equally essential that the public push back, as it did with family separation."
Exit polls show that 56% of U.S. voters favor offering immigrants already in the U.S. a pathway to citizenship, while Data for Progress found that survey respondents did not favor deportation for 7 out of 9 categories of people who might be caught up in a mass deportation scheme.
The ACLU has urged cities and states to take steps to protect their undocumented residents ahead of January 20.
"They should prepare for mass deportations because those will wreak havoc on the communities," Noreen Shah, director of government affairs at the ACLU's equality division, told Newsweek. "It will mean kids who go to school and their parents are gone and not there to pick them up at the end of the day."
In particular, legal groups are gearing up for Trump to potentially evoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which authorizes the country to deport noncitizens of a hostile nation. It has only been used three times, most recently to detain Japanese Americans during World War II.
"Many fear that a second Trump administration would seek to use this law to justify indefinite detention and remove people from the country swiftly and without judicial review," Shah told Reuters.
The Brennan Center for Justice has called on Congress to repeal the act.
"This law was shameful and dangerous back when it was created 200 years ago," the center's Marcelo Agudo wrote in October. "It's even more so today. It must be repealed or overturned."
Several other organizations pledged to continue defending immigrants and refugees after Trump declared victory.
"We have a simple message for President-elect Trump or his deputies if they decide to make good on their despicable plans: We will see you in court," Karen Tumlin, founder and director of Justice Action Center, said in a statement. "And, we have a message of love to immigrant communities, we see you, we are you, and we will stand with you."
Calling Trump's win "one of the most dangerous moments in our country's history, National Immigration Law Center president Kica Matos said the organization had led a "movement-wide effort to plan for this moment."
"Trump and his allies told us what he plans to do: mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, ending the right to public education for immigrant children, internment camps, and using the military to hunt down immigrants. We should take him at his word," Matos said.
She continued: "One thing is certain: we cannot and will not retreat. For more than 40 years, NILC has been steadfast in our fight to defend the rights of low-income immigrants and their loved ones. We successfully fought Donald Trump before, and we will do it again."
The American Immigrant Lawyers Association (AILA) pledged to continue working for its clients.
"If implemented, the anti-immigrant policies avowed by candidate Trump will inflict lasting damage to the American economy, communities, and character," AILA Executive Director Benjamin Johnson said in a statement. "AILA and its more than 16,000 members will continue to defend the Constitution and stand against laws and policies that violate due process, undermine civil rights, or denigrate the contributions of immigrants. Our future prosperity depends on not giving up. We must stand together and work towards a brighter future."
Refugees International also promised to continue with its "shared commitment to rights and refuge for people forced from their homes."
"Amid historic levels of global displacement, the incoming Trump administration plans to enact an anti-refugee, anti-asylum agenda that will endanger millions of people—both those threatened by crises overseas and those who have been welcomed as neighbors into communities across the United States," the group's president, Jeremy Konyndyk, said in a message to supporters. "Yet we hold on to hope, even as we are clear-eyed about the daunting struggles ahead."
Knowndyk added: "As we do under any presidential administration, we will work tirelessly with all of you to defend and advance the rights, protection, and well-being of all people forced to flee their homes."
United We Dream, the largest U.S. organization led by immigrant youth, committed to building the "largest pro-immigrant movement this country has ever seen."
"Immigrant young people of United We Dream declare ourselves hopeful and clear eyed about the fight ahead," said the group's executive director Greisa Martínez Rosas. "With Trump pledging to carry out the largest deportation effort in our country's history—ctivating the military to raid our communities, schools, hospitals, and more in order to round up our people into concentration camps—young, Black, brown, and queer leaders who have been at the vanguard of our movement and of creating meaningful change are ready move mountains to protect our communities."
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On Immigration, the Democrats Must Propose a True Alternative to Trumpism
Agreeing with Trump that immigrants are the enemy to be detained at the border, and then only disagreeing on the numbers and methods, contradicts any commitment to a fact-based policy, while making immigrant communities scapegoats.
Aug 19, 2024
On August 17, a group of committed migrant activists set forth on a three-day march from Silicon Valley to San Francisco, highlighting the choices for progressive candidates in the coming November election. Should their campaigns amplify the hysteria about an immigration “crisis,” or should they speak the truth to the American people about the border and the roots of migration? Even more important, these marchers are providing a practical way for activists and political leaders to advocate for rights as they work to defeat the threat of MAGA racism.
The question at hand is whether to support the compromise immigration enforcement bill negotiated between centrist Democrats and Republicans last year, and to campaign against former U.S. President Donald Trump from the right, attacking him for undermining Republican support for the enforcement measures it contained.
In that bill, President Joe Biden agreed that he would close the border to asylum applicants if their number rose beyond 5,000 per day, while making it much harder to gain legal status for those even allowed to apply. Biden said he would cut short the time for screening asylum applicants by asylum officers, which would make winning permission to stay much more difficult.
Winning public understanding of immigration is the only way to decisively defeat this anti-immigrant hysteria, rather than caving into its illogic, and to the media frenzy and the onslaught of Republicans and MAGA acolytes.
To keep people imprisoned while their cases are in process, instead of releasing them, Biden proposed an additional $3 billion for more detention centers, a euphemism for immigrant prisons. There are already over 200, according to the group Freedom for Immigrants. Under a law signed by former President Barack Obama, Congress required that 34,000 detention beds be filled every night. At the end of 2023, those beds held 36,263 people, and another 194,427 were in “Alternatives to Detention,” which required wearing the hated ankle bracelets that bar travel for more than a few blocks. Over 90% of these jails are run for profit by private companies like the Geo Group, (formerly the Pinkerton Detective Agency).
These proposals respond to a media-driven frenzy that constantly refers to an immigration “crisis” and calls the border “broken.” That media coverage, and the response by centrist Democrats and Republicans, treats migrants as criminals, as an enemy. Political operatives in Washington then take polls, announce that the public wants draconian enforcement, and advise candidates that going against this tide will lead to election losses.
Yet this accepted political “wisdom” in Washington is not actually based on facts.
Let’s Look at the Numbers
Department of Homeland Security statistics show that over the decades the number of people crossing the border, and subject to deportation, rises and falls, while displacement and forced migration remain constant. In 2022, about 1.1 million people were expelled after trying to cross, and another 350,000 deported. In 1992, about 1.2 million were stopped at the border and 1.1 million deported. Over a million people were deported in 1954 during the infamous “Operation Wetback.” Arrests at the border have totaled over a million in 29 of the last 46 years.
Last year the number arrested at the border was higher: about 2.5 million. But the reality is that the migration flow has not stopped and will not stop anytime soon. What, then, is the “crisis”? New York Times reporter Miriam Jordan says, “In December alone, more than 300,000 people crossed the southern border, a record number.” They all believe, she says, that “once they make it into the United States they will be able to stay. Forever. And by and large, they are not wrong.”
In fact, the number of refugee admissions in 2022 was 60,000. In 1992, it was 132,000. According to Jordan, applicants are simply released to live normal lives until their date before an immigration judge. That will certainly be news to families facing separation and the constant threat of deportation. But this is what Republicans and anti-immigrant Democrats call an “invasion” and threaten to “shut the border.”
Criminalizing the Undocumented
Should Trump win election in November, he promises to reinstitute the notorious family separation policy. Children who survive the crossing might easily be lost, as so many were, in the huge detention system. Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) wants to reintroduce the “Remain in Mexico” policy, under which people wanting asylum were not allowed to enter the United States at all, to file their applications. The Mexican government was forced to set up detention centers just south of the border to house them while they waited.
Trump and other Republicans would imprison all migrants who face a court proceeding that allows them to apply to stay or stop a deportation. Pending cases now number in the millions, because the immigration court system is starved for the resources for processing them.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pushed through a law that makes being undocumented a state crime. Republicans in Congress last year proposed to build more border walls, create barriers to asylum, force the firing of millions of undocumented workers, and permit children to be held in detention prisons with their parents. Centrist Democrats are very willing to agree to modified proposals like these.
No money, running from something or someone, trying to keep a family together and give it a future, or just needing a job at whatever wage—these are the commonalities of the thousands who arrive at the U.S. border every year. Winning public understanding of immigration is the only way to decisively defeat this anti-immigrant hysteria, rather than caving into its illogic, and to the media frenzy and the onslaught of Republicans and MAGA acolytes.
Roots of Migration
President Obama made some acknowledgement of the poverty and violence that impels people to come but drew the line at recognizing this migration’s historical roots, much less any culpability on the part of the U.S. government. President Biden sent Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic candidate for president, to Central America in his first year in office with a similar message—don’t come.
So far, the new presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris has not taken a different direction. In Arizona she gave a speech recommitting to the Biden-brokered compromise and criticizing Trump for killing it. In a new TV ad, she promised to hire thousands of additional border patrol agents. The three enforcement arms of the Department of Homeland Security—the Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement today account for 52,300 officers, making it the largest law enforcement agency in the country. The numbers mushroomed by 22,000 in the past 20 years; the Border Patrol alone tripled from 2,700 to 8,200.
The rationale for this huge increase is that immigrants must be met with deterrence and enforcement to stop them from coming. Today an unwillingness to look at U.S. responsibility for producing displacement and migration is starkest in relation to Haitians and Venezuelans, who have made up a large percentage of the migrants arriving at the Rio Grande in the last two years.
No matter how many walls and migrant prisons the government builds, people will come.
After Haitians finally rid themselves of the U.S.-supported Duvalier regime and elected Jean Bertrand Aristide president, the United States put him on an outbound plane in 2004, as it did with Miguel Zelaya in Honduras. A string of U.S.-backed corrupt but business-friendly governments followed, which pocketed millions while Haitians went hungry and homeless by the tens of thousands after earthquakes and other disasters. The treatment of Haitian migrants is a form of institutionalized racism.
Survival in Venezuela became impossible for many as its economy suffered body blows from U.S. political intervention and economic sanctions. If the United States moves further to increase sanctions in response to the recent elections, it will produce even more migration.
These interventions produce migrants and then criminalize them. In 2023, the Border Patrol took 334,914 Venezuelans into custody, along with 163,701 Haitians. And while promoting military intervention in Haiti and regime change in Venezuela, the Biden administration put people on deportation flights back home, in the hope that this would discourage others from starting the journey north.
The disconnect is obvious to anyone born south of the Mexican border. Sergio Sosa, a Guatemalan exile who heads the Heartland Workers Center in Omaha, observes: “People from Europe and the U.S. crossed borders to come to us, and took over our land and economy. Migration is a form of fighting back. We’re in our situation, not because we decided to be, but because we’re in the U.S.’s backyard.” While former President Bill Clinton was the author of many anti-immigrant measures, he did recognize this historic truth, and apologized to the Guatemalan people for the U.S. support of the military dictatorships that massacred thousands.
The Democrats have to tell people the truth, and political campaigns are the times when this is most important. Agreeing with Trump that immigrants are the enemy to be detained at the border, and then only disagreeing on the numbers and methods, contradicts any commitment to a fact-based policy, while making immigrant communities scapegoats.
As they march from Silicon Valley, immigrant rights campaigners are reminding the Democratic Party of this truth and are calling for a commitment to the welfare of the 11 million people already in the United States who lack legal immigration status. That commitment has been all but lost in the border “crisis” hype.
An Alternative Approach
The goal of these marchers is to win support for a bill that could make a profound difference in the lives of millions of people. Today, anyone who entered the United States without a visa before January 1, 1972 can apply for legal permanent residence. From 2015 to 2019, however, only 305 people received legal status this way because over 90% of undocumented immigrants came after that date. As the years go by, ever fewer numbers qualify.
Known as the Registry Bill, HR 1511 would allow anyone in the country for seven years to apply for legal status. Emma Delgado, a leader of Mujeres Unidas y Activas (United and Active Women) in San Francisco says, “I haven’t seen my children in many years because there is currently no way for me to apply for legal residency.” She called the family separation produced by current immigration law “immoral.”
Angelica Salas, director of the Coalition for Humane Immigration Reform in Los Angeles, challenges the idea that Democrats can’t campaign for it during an election year, and that a Republican majority in the House dooms it. “Think of all the millions of U.S. citizens who have immigrant parents,” she urges, “and how many have had their fathers or mothers deported. All over the country. Immigrant workers are a big part of the workforce. They’re all part of a base that can force change. We can’t depend on political winds or what people tell us is possible.”
No matter how many walls and migrant prisons the government builds, people will come. Over the years they will become part of communities here, and with progressive immigration policies, eventually voting citizens. Democrats need a long-term vision that sees the future in organizing and defending them, in turning those old anti-immigrant arguments around, rather than reinforcing them.
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The Government Won’t Let My Wife and Me Raise Our Family in the United States
As it considers Department of State v. Muñoz, I hope the Supreme Court listens to our stories and ensures that U.S. citizens will have access to a fairer process when seeking to live with their non-citizen spouses.
Apr 23, 2024
When my first wife passed away more than a decade ago, it was one of the hardest times in my life. I became a single father, and while it’s been my life’s joy to raise my kids, it has been lonely. That changed when Deborah came into my life.
We met on a Christian website and immediately fell in love. Despite me living in Missouri and Deborah in Kenya, we had an instant connection. She is beautiful, caring, and smart as a whip. We started talking every day and quickly realized we wanted to spend our lives together.
We are both preachers, and our faith has given us strength as we navigate life’s challenges. In 2018, I flew to Kenya and we got married at a big church wedding in her parent’s village. I adopted Deborah’s daughter from a previous marriage, and in 2020, we had our own beautiful baby girl.
As an American citizen, I never thought I would be forced to choose between love and country. I am an Army and Navy veteran, and it feels like a betrayal of my service that I can’t live with my family in my own country.
Our family has a near-perfect life except for one thing: A consular officer in the U.S. Embassy in Kenya will not grant Deborah’s visa to live in the United States. To complicate things further, my stepdaughter’s visa was approved. She now lives with me and my eldest daughter outside Kansas City while our toddler lives in Kenya with her mother.
My desires are simple: I want to live with my wife and our children. I trust God has a plan, but that doesn’t make living apart less difficult. We spend hours on the phone every day, and I go to Kenya twice a year, but it’s not the same as living together. I have a good union job on a Ford assembly line in a community I love, and if I moved to Kenya I wouldn’t be able to provide for my family the way they deserve.
As an American citizen, I never thought I would be forced to choose between love and country. I am an Army and Navy veteran, and it feels like a betrayal of my service that I can’t live with my family in my own country.
Never once have Deborah and I doubted our commitment to each other, but it isn’t easy to function as a family spread across two continents. Thankfully, my wife and I are both stubborn as an ox. It’s part of what makes us a good match, and it means we’re never going to stop fighting for our family. We know we’re meant to be together; it’s just a matter of when and how.
That’s why I am helping challenge these unjust family separations. With the support of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) and American Families United, I contributed my story to a friend of the court brief in the Supreme Court case Department of State v. Muñoz. Like my family, the husband and wife at the center of this case have been separated for years because of a decision of a single consular officer. The Supreme Court is considering whether U.S. citizens have a constitutionally protected interest in a visa for their spouse.
For families in our situation, the decision in this case could be life-changing. The Court will hear the case April 23, with a decision expected in the summer. As they consider the case, I hope the Supreme Court justices listen to our stories and ensure that U.S. citizens will have access to a fairer process when seeking to live with their non-citizen spouses in the United States.
For now, my family and I continue to pray every day that we’ll be able to live together soon. We hope you’ll join us.
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Coalition Implores Biden to Act as Abbott's 'Campaign of Cruelty' Separates Families
"We urge the Biden administration to immediately reunite separated families and launch an investigation into Texas' Operation Lone Star," said #WelcomeWithDignity's campaign manager.
Aug 07, 2023
The #WelcomeWithDignity campaign for asylum rights on Monday condemned what it called Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's "unconscionable" decision to "repeat one of the most horrific and cruel practices of the Trump administration" by separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Houston Chronicle reported last week that officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) have separated at least 26 families by arresting fathers on trespassing charges and transferring relatives including small children to U.S. Border Patrol custody.
DPS spokesman Travis Considine confirmed that "there have been instances in which DPS has arrested male migrants" traveling with their families, but that "children and mothers were never separated" as they were turned over to Border Patrol agents.
"With Texas troopers separating families at the border, the world can now see that Governor Abbott's cruelty knows no bounds."
"We were already shocked and appalled by the razor wire and buoy barriers, denial of water, and pushbacks of children into the river," #WelcomeWithDignity campaign manager Melina Roche said in a statement, referring to the floating border barrier installed in the Rio Grande near Eagle Pass and reports that Texas state troopers have been ordered to push migrant children back into the river and deny asylum-seekers water amid a deadly heatwave.
"With Texas troopers separating families at the border, the world can now see that Governor Abbott's cruelty knows no bounds," Roche added. "The governor will continue to punish families for seeking safety unless the federal government intervenes. We urge the Biden administration to immediately reunite separated families and launch an investigation into Texas' Operation Lone Star."
The #WelcomeWithDignity coalition said its members are "appalled" that the Biden administration "hasn't put a stop to Gov. Abbott's campaign of cruelty."
While Biden has ended some of the more egregious human rights violations perpetrated against migrants during former President Donald Trump's tenure, his administration has come under fire for
continuing and expanding Trump-era policies like Title 42—a public health order that both presidents invoked to deport around two million asylum-seekers under the pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic—and new asylum restrictions to replace Title 42 after its expiration in May. Last month, a federal court blocked Biden's new policy.
Kristin Etter, an attorney and special project director at Texas RioGrande Legal Aid, called Abbott's policy "nothing short of state-sanctioned family separation."
Danilo Zack, acting director of policy and advocacy at Church World Service, said that "child-parent separation has profound and devastating consequences, and these actions recall the appalling scenes of the Trump-era zero-tolerance policy."
Zack was referring to Trump's internationally condemned crackdown on undocumented migrants including people legally seeking asylum, during which around 4,000 children were seized from their families and sent to locations around the country. With recordkeeping of the minors' identities and locations "patchwork at best," according to the Department of Homeland Security, nearly 1 in 4 of the separated children were yet to be reunited with their relatives as of earlier this year.
As public outrage mounted in the face of stories like a breastfeeding baby being torn away from her mother and a father driven to suicide after being separated from his wife and child, the Trump administration reluctantly rolled back the policy in June 2018.
Experts said family separation deeply traumatized parents and children, who were often told by U.S. officials that they would never see each other again. Some may indeed never be reunited. Numerous children were given to U.S. families, who sometimes petition for permanent custody.
"During the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy, I witnessed how family separation inflicts lasting trauma on the parents and children who were cruelly torn apart," Katharina Obser, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission, said in a
statement Monday.
"It is unconscionable that this horrific practice is added onto a long list of cruel practices already taking place under Gov. Abbott's Operation Lone Star—including using razor wire and large buoys to block the Rio Grande shore," Obser added. "When people are fleeing to save their lives, attempts at deterrence only place vulnerable people in more danger and anguish, rather than stop their need to seek safety."
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Three Crimes Trump Should Have Been Indicted for Instead
Some of the actions Trump took while president were much, much worse than storing some old files in his bathroom.
Jun 11, 2023
Although the saga of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, as revealed in the 38-count indictment, is shocking to anyone who has ever been involved in government work, it is also darkly comic and trivial. Trump seems to have held on to the top secret documents the way a collector hangs on to objets d’art once loaned to him—just to have them around and to take them out and show people to impress them from time to time.
There isn’t any evidence that he planned to use the documents to make money or to blackmail someone. He was just a spoiled rich guy born with a silver spoon in his mouth who was used to keeping stuff he wanted to keep, and was used to impressing people with his stuff.
In my view some of the actions Trump took while president were much, much worse than storing some old files in his bathroom. The government over-classifies things, and the 1917 Espionage Act, which underpins some of the charges against him, is unconstitutional and should be struck down. Maybe if the Republicans are angered enough by its use against their party’s leader they can be proper libertarians and get rid of the damn thing.
Trump seems to have held on to the top secret documents the way a collector hangs on to objets d’art once loaned to him—just to have them around and to take them out and show people to impress them from time to time.
So here are three things Trump did, which immediately come to mind, that should have been crimes that landed him in jail.
1. Trump initiated a formal policy of family separation of undocumented immigrants to the United States. He didn’t change the law, just the way Homeland Security and other agencies viewed the law. It is not intrinsically illegal for people to enter the U.S. without a visa, if, for instance, they are seeking asylum. You can’t really tell the status of their case until they go before a judge. So up until 2017 they weren’t considered criminals. But Trump encouraged law enforcement to disregard asylum claims and to view them as having broken the law for just having stepped foot in the U.S. If they were criminals they had to be jailed. And children cannot be held in a jail for adults. So the practical outcome of treating the parents as criminals was that their children would be taken from them by child services and placed in juvenile detention or even in foster homes.
The policy had no other rationale but cruelty. Then White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, part of Trump’s psychopathocracy, openly boasted about sending a message in this way to immigrant families not to come with their children. There is no, repeat, no evidence that the family separations slowed immigration. The practice did, however, resemble the actions of slavers in the America of the 19th century who separated enslaved families and sold family members down the river. Some of the children taken away were U.S.-born. The government lost track of others. Some children were abused.
Anybody who did a thing like that should go to jail for life.
Anybody who did a thing like that should go to jail for life. But it wasn’t even illegal, and, although 66% of Americans disapproved, 27% thought it was the right thing to do.
2. Muslim Ban. Trump tried three times to come up with regulatory language that would allow him to ban some Muslims from coming to the United States. Discriminating against people on the basis of religion is un-American. Because he finally tied the ban to countries that would not or could not conform to U.S. reporting requirements on would-be immigrants, he finally made it stick. Most of the big Muslim countries, like Egypt, Turkey, Bangladesh, and Indonesia were not even affected. He managed to make life more difficult for Yemeni-Americans who could not see their grandparents anymore, or for desperate Syrians trying to flee their civil war. As with family separation, the cruelty was the point.
3. Trump’s deployment of force against peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters at LaFayette Square in June 2020 was illegal and unconstitutional. His attempt to order in military forces contravened posse comitatus.
Scott Michelman of the ACLU observed, “The President’s shameless, unconstitutional, unprovoked, and frankly criminal attack on protesters because he disagreed with their views shakes the foundation of our nation’s constitutional order. And when the nation’s top law enforcement officer becomes complicit in the tactics of an autocrat, it chills protected speech for all of us.”
Also illegal was his use of federal agents to kidnap protesters in Portland, Oregon, off the streets without due process.
Of course these three lawless actions that harmed large numbers of innocent people are only a drop in the bucket among the innumerable unethical, illegal, unconstitutional, or just plain ugly things Trump did to our country. If he goes to jail for stupidly fooling around with some old Pentagon war plans, that will be ironic, since it is probably the least damaging of his crimes.
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