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women's refugee commission
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
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— 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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Experts Warn of 'Devastating Damage' From Trump Reinstating Global Gag Rule
"People worldwide will have fewer points of service," said Doctors Without Borders. "It means fewer safe places to talk about their health options, and fewer providers to go to for help during medical emergencies."
Jan 27, 2025
Reproductive rights and medical experts on Monday continued to warn that U.S. President Donald Trump's highly anticipated reinstatement of the Mexico City Policy, which bans nongovernmental organizations that perform or promote abortion from receiving federal funding, will cause "devastating damage" for people around the world.
The global gag rule (GGR), as it is called by critics, has been imposed by every Republican president for decades, including Trump during his first term. After returning to office a week ago, Trump on Friday signed an executive order "to end the use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion" and revived the controversial rule with a presidential memorandum.
"As the single largest funder of international aid, the U.S. plays a powerful role in shaping the global health landscape—and women's and girls' lives are being used as pawns in this political game," Dr. Carole Sekimpi wrote Monday for the British journal The BMJ. "My work overseeing reproductive health programs in Africa for MSI Reproductive Choices gives me an understanding of the profound consequences that this will have on communities that Trump will never set foot in."
"It's prudent to first understand that the U.S. government never funds abortions," Sekimpi stressed, noting the rule punishes groups that participate in anything abortion-related with separate funding. "Last time Trump was in power, MSI was among those that refused to accept the terms of this policy. The U.S. funding we lost would have allowed us to serve 8 million women, preventing 6 million unintended pregnancies, 1.8 million unsafe abortions, and 20,000 maternal deaths. And that was just one organization."
Ibis Reproductive Health president Kelly Blanchard and Evelyne Opondo, an Ibis board member and the International Center for Research on Women's Africa director, also emphasized in a Monday Medium post that the rule's impact "is felt keenly by organizations that provide comprehensive sexual and reproductive healthcare—including contraception and abortion care—around the world," such as MSI and International Planned Parenthood Federation, "who refuse to abide by the terms because they support the human rights of all people and will not withhold information or critical reproductive healthcare from individuals who need it."
"The GGR flies in the face of both human rights and evidence-based public health," the pair asserted. "The GGR does not prevent abortion from happening but rather increases barriers to abortion access, reduces access to contraception increasing risk of unintended pregnancy, and could actually increase unsafe abortion, a key driver of maternal deaths around the world."
Melanie Nezer, vice president for advocacy and external relations at the Women's Refugee Commission, similarly declared in a Monday statement denouncing the GGR, "Let us be clear: this policy will not protect lives—it will endanger them."
"The goal of the global gag rule is to curtail access to safe sexual and reproductive healthcare, including access to safe abortion," she said. "The result is more suffering from the consequences of conflict-related sexual violence, more unintended pregnancies, more unsafe abortions, and more maternal death that would otherwise be entirely preventable."
Reproductive rights groups worldwide were similarly critical of the decision on Friday and throughout the weekend, with Planned Parenthood Federation of America president and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson calling it "dangerous" and arguing that "elected officials should not be interfering in personal medical decisions, in this country or anywhere in the world."
Like the critics on Monday, Rachana Desai Martin, chief government and external relations officer at the Center for Reproductive Rights, pointed to the fallout from GGR during the Republican's first term and said that "the reinstatement and expansion of President Trump's global gag rule is a direct assault on the health and human rights of millions of people around the world."
Also recalling the first Trump administration, Guttmacher Institute acting co-CEO Destiny Lopez highlighted how her group's "research has documented its severe ripple effects, including stalling and even reversing progress in expanding access to modern contraception in countries like Ethiopia and Uganda."
"Now history will sadly and shamefully repeat itself, and people in many countries will find it harder to access safe abortion, contraception, and other critical health services," she said, vowing to track the impacts and work to repeal the harmful policy.
Reproductive Freedom for All president and CEO Mini Timmaraju also pledged to battle the GGR and other Republican attacks on choice, saying that "these policies inflict harm on those who need access to reproductive healthcare, including abortion, in our country, and around the world—and we will fight back."
Previewing the fight ahead, National Abortion Federation president and CEO Brittany Fonteno warned that the GGR "will not be the last" attack on reproductive healthcare, adding that "for nearly a decade now, Donald Trump has shown us just how dangerous he is for abortion access, and it is clear that over the next four years, the anti-abortion movement will take every opportunity to strip away our fundamental right to reproductive freedom—both here and abroad."
RealClearPolitics, the first to report the rule's revival, noted that "the president timed the release of his executive actions to coincide with the annual March for Life on Friday when some of his most ardent supporters rallied on the National Mall. Vice President JD Vance addressed the march in person, while Trump recorded a video message Thursday to be played at the Friday rally."
Although Trump said on the campaign trail that he thinks abortion policies should be decided at the state level, rights advocates have cited his extensive record of dishonesty and bragging about the role he played in overturning Roe v. Wade, and expressed fear that the Republican-controlled Congress will send a national abortion ban to his desk.
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Activists Implore Biden to Eschew 'Brutal' Trade-Offs in New Migrant Policy
"The Biden administration should focus on measures like increasing refugee resettlement and regular pathways and abandon its plan to impose an asylum ban that would be a legal, moral, and political mistake," said one advocate.
Apr 27, 2023
While welcoming parts of the Biden administration's newly announced plans to expand refugee resettlement and family reunification parole in the Americas, migrant rights advocates on Thursday warned that provisions restricting the rights of asylum-seekers undermined the policy.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday unveiled sweeping measures to address migration from Latin American and Caribbean nations to the United States ahead of next month's termination of Title 42, a public health order invoked by the Trump and Biden administrations to deport more than 2.7 million asylum-seekers under pretext of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Title 42 is set to expire on May 11 with the end of the Covid-19 national public health emergency. Experts say as many as 10,000-13,000 migrants could arrive at the southern border each day after Title 42 ends.
The administration will open immigration processing centers throughout Latin America, while expanding access to CBP One, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app through which asylum-seekers can schedule an appointment to present themselves at a port of entry.
\u201cWATCH: @SecMayorkas and @SecBlinken announce new regional migration management measures that the United States government will implement with partners in South and Central America when the CDC\u2019s Title 42 public health order lifts: https://t.co/9QbxivzbSh\u201d— Homeland Security (@Homeland Security) 1682610020
U.S. partners, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the U.N.'s International Organization for Migration, will screen migrants at the processing centers to determine if they are eligible to enter the United States before they travel to the southern border.
Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security is creating a new family reunification parole process for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Colombia.
The U.S. is also doubling the number of refugees from Western Hemisphere nations while continuing to accept up to 30,000 individuals per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti as part of an expanded parole process announced earlier this year.
However, the new policy will prohibit asylum-seekers who crossed through a third country on their way to the U.S.-Mexico border, unless they had previously applied for and been denied asylum elsewhere or used CBP One to obtain an appointment at a U.S. point of entry.
\u201c\u201cThe actions announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) include finalizing a regulation that presumes those who cross into the U.S. at the southwest border without authorization or having used a lawful pathway are ineligible for asylum.\u201d That\u2019s brutal\u201d— Naeem Baig (@Naeem Baig) 1682639183
"The Biden administration is rightly expanding refugee resettlement from the Americas, an overdue step towards addressing a longstanding gap for people in need of international protection," said Eleanor Acer, senior director of refugee protection at Human Rights First.
"This initiative should swiftly bring refugees to safety and not be used to reduce the resettlement of refugees from other regions," Acer added. "The Biden administration should focus on measures like increasing refugee resettlement and regular pathways and abandon its plan to impose an asylum ban that would be a legal, moral, and political mistake."
\u201cExpanded & improved legal migration pathways by the Biden Admin is a crucial step in the right direction. We, however, urge the Admin not to move forward with the proposed asylum ban or pair announcements on legal pathways with hardline deterrence efforts. https://t.co/331nC7FXgJ\u201d— FWD.us (@FWD.us) 1682634158
The International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), a New York-based legal aid organization, summed up the sentiment of numerous advocacy groups, writing that while it "welcomes the expansion of family reunification parole programs and refugee processing in the Americas," it "strongly opposes doing so as a trade-off for limiting the legal rights of people seeking asylum in the United States."
"While today’s announcement recognizes the protection needs of people seeking asylum at the border, the administration's simultaneous pursuit of an asylum ban and other immigration restrictions runs counter to the aim of expanding humanitarian protections," the group added.
IRAP policy director Sunil Varghese said in a statement that "expanding family reunification parole pathways and refugee processing for displaced people in the Americas is long overdue, but we cannot ignore that the Biden administration is proposing a Faustian bargain by simultaneously seeking to implement a Trump-era asylum ban at the U.S-Mexico border, effectively slamming the door shut on countless others in need."
"Framing USRAP as a border management tool risks further politicizing a program already at a crossroads, and should not come at the expense of asylum protections," Varghese added. "There should be more pathways to safety for people in the Americas, not fewer."
\u201cBREAKING: The Biden admin announced new measures to address regional migration.\n\n@IRAP welcomes expanding family reunification and refugee processing in the Americas, but strongly opposes doing so as a trade off for limiting the right to seek asylum. \nhttps://t.co/i3G4beaFD1\u201d— IRAP (@IRAP) 1682616880
IRAP recommends the Biden administration expand its capacity to adjudicate asylum applications, improve the efficiency of the interview and vetting process—including by incorporating video technology—and ensure due process and transparency in refugee processing.
Katharina Obser, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women's Refugee Commission, an international advocacy group, said in a statement that WRC "welcomes the administration's recognition of the need for more pathways to protection for people displaced in Latin America and the Caribbean."
"However, WRC remains deeply concerned that these measures come at the expense of the ability to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border," she continued. "Although today's announcement suggests more appointments will become available for people seeking asylum using the CBP One application—and WRC supports increasing capacity for asylum processing at ports of entry—the administration should also maintain the right to seek asylum without an appointment for those who cannot wait or cannot use the application."
"Ultimately, the expansion of access to one set of protections—such as resettlement, parole, and family reunification—should not come at the expense of others, such as access to asylum at the border," Obser added. "We had hoped to be able to express more support and optimism about the administration's proposed plans as Title 42 finally comes to a long overdue end. Ultimately, while we welcome additional migration pathways and regional processes, we call on the administration to again reconsider its approach to asylum at the U.S. border."
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