SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
family separation
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."
Keep ReadingShow Less
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.
Keep ReadingShow Less
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.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular